THE  NEW  DECALOGUE 

OF  SCIENCE  c| 

- - - - - 

ALBERT  EDWARD  WIGGAM 


Division  HQ.  7  5 1 

Section  .W65 


4 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
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THE  NEW 

DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


I:"  s 

ALBERT  EDWARD  WIGGAM 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1922,  1923 
By  The  Bobbs-Merrill  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWORTH  &  CO 
BOOK  MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN,  N.  Y. 


TO  MY  WIFE 


Whose  extensive  readings  in  the  lit¬ 
erature  of  biology,  psychology,  genetics 
and  heredity  have  alone  made  this 
book  possible,  and  whose  eyes  have  for 
many  years  largely  taken  the  place  of 
my  own,  this  effort  to  think  about 
things,  instead  of  fictions,  wish-fancies 
and  symbols  of  things,  is  affectionately 

dedicated. 


\ 


> 


PREFACE 


I  am  indebted  in  many  ways  to  many  men  either 
through  their  books  or  public  lectures  or  through 
personal  letters,  stray  remarks  and  casual  observa¬ 
tions,  or  else  through  long  continued  table  talks, 
sometimes  extended  into  gray  morning  hours,  those 
priceless  hours  when  men  think  in  each  other’s 
presence  aloud.  In  some  or  all  these  respects  I  am 
indebted  to  Frederick  Adams  Woods,  Professor 
Edward  L.  Thorndike,  Everett  Dean  Martin,  Pro¬ 
fessor  John  Dewey,  James  Harvey  Robinson,  Doc¬ 
tor  Irwin  Edman,  Professor  Thomas  Hunt  Morgan, 
Doctor  Charles  B.  Davenport,  Doctor  Raymond 
Pearl,  Professor  E.  M.  East,  Professor  G.  T.  W. 
Patrick,  Professor  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Alleyne  Ireland, 
Judge  Harry  Olson,  Professor  Franklin  H.  Bid¬ 
dings,  Professor  William  MacDougall,  Professor 
Karl  Pearson,  Doctor  J.  McKeen  Cattell  and  Pro¬ 
fessor  Lewis  M,  Terman, 

Deeper,  however,  than  to  any  one  else,  perhaps, 
is  my  debt  to  my  boyhood  teacher  in  ethics  and 
philosophy,  the  late  Doctor  Daniel  W.  Fisher,  Presi¬ 
dent  of  Hanover  College,  whom,  although  his  im¬ 
mense  scholarship  was  largely  that  of  a  past  age  of 
thought,  I  still  regard  with  reverence  as  having 
been  one  of  the  great  teachers  of  the  world. 

Doctor  Glenn  Frank,  whose  career,  in  my  judg¬ 
ment,  will  be  one  of  the  world-events  of  the  coming 
generation,  and  who  in  his  genius,  scholarship,  poise 
and  insight  represents  the  new  type  of  statesman, 
of  whom  I  have  endeavored  to  write,  has  kindly  read 


PREFACE 


the  manuscript  twice  and  made  many  invaluable 
suggestions. 

Thanks  are  due  the  Century  Magazine  for  per¬ 
mission  to  reprint  the  brief  essay  entitled  “The 
New  Decalogue  of  Science,  ”  which  appeared  in  the 
issue  of  March,  1922,  and  which  forms  the  basic 
outline  of  the  present  volume.  Also  to  the  Pictorial 
Review  for  permission  to  reprint  from  its  issue  of 
June,  1923,  the  chapter  on  Preferential  Reproduc¬ 
tion. 

A.  E.  W. 

New  York  City, 

October  8,  1923. 


CONTENTS 


THE  ETHICAL  CHALLENGE 

Page 

The  New  Biology  and  the  Old  Statesmanship  ....  15 

THE  FIVE  WARNINGS 
1 

That  the  Advanced  Races  Are  Going  Backward  ...  25 

2 

That  Heredity  Is  the  Chief  Maker  of  Men . 42 

3 

That  the  Golden  Rule  without  Science  Will  Wreck 
the  Race  that  Tries  It . 54 

4 

That  Medicine,  Hygiene  and  Sanitation  Will  Weaken 
the  Human  Race . 6.1 

5 

That  Morals,  Education,  Art  and  Religion  Will  Not 
Improve  the  Human  Race . 69 

THE  ETHICAL  TRANSITION 
The  New  Mount  Sinai — The  Laboratory . 79 

THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS  OF  SCIENCE 

1 

The  Duty  of  Eugenics . 99 

2 

The  Duty  of  Scientific  Research . 112 

3 

The  Duty  of  the  Socialization  of  Science . 121 

4 

The  Duty  of  Measuring  Men . 135 


CONTENTS — Continued 

r  Page 


o 

The  Duty  of  Humanizing  Industry . 153 

6 

The  Duty  of  Preferential  Reproduction  . . 171 

7 

The  Duty  of  Trusting  Intelligence . 186 

8 

The  Duty  of  Art . . 205 

9 

The  Duty  of  Internationalism . .  217 

10 


The  Duty  of  Philosophical  Reconstruction . 233 

10 

The  Duty  of  Philosophical  Reconstruction — Continued  247 

10 

The  Duty  of  Philosophical  Reconstruction — Concluded  254 

THE  ETHICAL  OUTLOOK 


The  Mental  Habits  for  a  New  Approach . 273 

Index  . 291 


THE  ETHICAL  CHALLENGE 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE 
OF  SCIENCE 


The  New  Biology  and  the  Old  Statesmanship 

to  his  excellency,  the  statesman 
executive  mansion 

Sir:  Biology,  as  Your  Excellency  I  fear  is  only 
vaguely  aware,  is  the  science  of  life.  It  is  what  we 
know  of  living  things. 

Statesmanship,  as  you  are  fully  aware,  is  the  art 
— and  we  hope  may  some  day  be  the  science — of  the 
control  of  life. 

Now,  you  control  life  upon  a  vaster  scale  than 
any  other  human  being.  In  every  field  of  adminis¬ 
tration  of  those  affairs  which  lie  beyond  individual 
control,  whether  in  business,  industry,  education, 
religion  or  politics  proper,  you  are  the  cliiefest  ar¬ 
biter  of  the  destiny  of  the  race.  More  than  any 
other  member  of  the  community  you  determine  who 
shall  secure  food,  and  who  shall  starve;  who  shall 
secure  clothing  and  shelter,  and  who  shall  freeze; 
who  shall  obtain  life’s  opportunities — its  education, 
its  social  and  economic  rewards,  and  who,  in  these 
respects,  shall  fail;  in  short,  who  shall  survive  and 
who  shall  perish  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In  a 

15 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


real  sense  you  determine  the  very  trend  of  human 
evolution.  What  you  think,  therefore,  and  say  and 
do  about  life  is  the  most  important  thing  in  the 
whole  world. 

Yet,  Your  Excellency,  I  venture  to  address  you 
personally  in  these  pages,  because  there  are  now  on 
the  shelves  of  our  libraries  at  least  five  or  six 
thousand  volumes  and  special  investigations  deal¬ 
ing  with  this  subject  of  life  of  which,  I  regret  to  say, 
it  seems  you  have  never  even  heard.  They  represent 
the  experiments  upon  life  and  the  best  thinking  of 
many  of  the  world’s  greatest  minds  and  noblest 
spirits  for  the  past  one  hundred  years.  Since  your 
own  task  is  so  extremely  difficult  and  since  you  are 
dealing  with  precisely  the  same  problem  as  are 
these  men,  it  would  seem  that  you  could  be  of  mutual 
service.  You  could  immensely  aid  the  biologist,  and 
he  believes  that,  after  a  hundred  years  of  toil,  he  is 
now  able  to  aid  you.  Every  act  of  yours  is  freighted 
with  such  incalculable  human  destiny  that  it  would 
seem,  in  ordinary  humanness,  of  which  your  heart 
is  so  full,  that  you,  your  colleagues,  your  cabinets, 
chancellories,  legislators,  would  all  be  waiting  with 
bated  breath  for  every  one  of  these  great  new  in¬ 
sights  into  nature  and  human  nature,  these  new 
solutions  of  your  own  most  pressing  problems  to 
pour  from  the  laboratory. 

Above  all,  when  you  witness  daily  the  marvelous 
benefits  in  comfort,  food,  clothing,  shelter,  transpor¬ 
tation,  wealth,  health  and  longevity,  which  science 
in  all  its  forms  has  brought  to  you  and  to  your  com 

16 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

stituents,  it  would  seem  that  you  would  seek  earn¬ 
estly  to  adopt  for  your  own  work  at  least  the  spirit 
and  method,  the  life  and  view-point  by  which  all 
these  blessings  have  been  achieved.  Their  danger 
lies  in  that  they  may  increase  the  speed  of  life  but 
not  its  tide  and  volume,  its  movement  but  not  its 
cubic  content,  its  swiftness  but  not  its  momentum. 
If  you  do  not  gather  this  new  spirit  and  method, 
if  you  do  not  then  apply  it  with  decision  and  in¬ 
telligence  not  only  to  wealth  but  to  life,  science, 
instead  of  bringing  Utopia,  will  surely  bring  chaos. 
All  this  sense  of  progress  will  be  merely  a  biological 
joy-ride  with  hell  at  the  next  turn.  If  I  am  mistaken 
in  saying  that  you  have  never  even  heard  of  these 
numerous  volumes  about  life,  I  am  not  mistaken,  I 
think,  in  saying  that  they  have  had  singularly  slight 
influence  upon  your  policy  and  action. 

Your  public  utterances,  but  not  your  political, 
economic  or  social  structure  and  procedure,  reveal 
however  that  you  are  familiar  with  some  Ten  Com¬ 
mandments  which  God  wrote  on  tables  of  stone 
and  gave  to  one  of  your  predecessors  as  the  true 
chart  of  statesmanship.  He  later  added  two  supple¬ 
ments  known  as  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  Though  you  know  them  well,  you 
have  failed  conspicuously  to  put  these  nourishing 
principles  into  practise;  but  what  I  think  will  sur¬ 
prise  Your  Excellency  is  to  learn  that  God  is  still 
doing  the  same  thing.  However,  in  our  day,  instead 
of  using  tables  of  stone,  burning  bushes,  prophecies 
and  dreams  to  reveal  His  will,  He  has  given  men  the 

17 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


microscope,  the  spectroscope,  the  telescope,  the 
chemist’s  test  tube  and  the  statistician’s  curve  in 
order  to  enable  men  to  make  their  own  revelations. 
These  instruments  of  divine  revelation  have  not 
only  added  an  enormous  range  of  new  command¬ 
ments — an  entirely  new  Decalogue — to  man’s  moral 
codes,  but  they  have  supplied  him  with  the  tech¬ 
nique  for  putting  the  old  ones  into  effect. 

Men  have  never  been  really  righteous  because 
they  did  not  know  how.  They  could  not  obey  God’s 
will  because  they  had  no  way  of  finding  out  what 
it  was.  The  spirit  of  the  old  commandment  to  love 
thy  neighbor  as  thyself  was  right,  but  how  could  a 
man  love  his  neighbor  intelligently  when  he  did  not 
know  what  was  good  for  him?  The  Good  Samaritan 
bound  up  his  fellow  traveler’s  wounds,  but  doubt¬ 
less  left  them  full  of  microbes  and  thus  probably 
killed  him.  The  Good  Samaritan  on  the  Hoad  to 
Jericho  and  the  Good  Samaritan  on  Broadway  live 
in  two  different  moral  worlds.  “Give  a  cup  of  cold 
water  to  your  neighbor”  was  a  precious  admonition, 
but  modern  science  sternly  asks,  “Are  there  any 
colon  bacilli  in  it?”  “Multiply  and  replenish  the 
earth”  was  a  counsel  of  perfection  when  there  were 
only  eight  people  on  the  globe,  but  when  there  are 
two  thousand  millions  it  gives  even  the  rhapsodist 
pause.  Especially,  the  biologist  would  like  to  know 
wliat  sort  of  stock  the  earth  is  to  be  replenished 
with.  He  has  found  that  many  who  multiply  the 
most  have  not  sufficient  intelligence  to  add.  And 
so  one  could  run  through  all  the  great  new  cate- 

18 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

gories  of  modern  conduct.  Your  own  imagination 
will  suggest  that  the  range  of  ancient  moralities  for 
a  tribe  can  not  suffice  for  the  ethics  of  a  planet.  Not 
only  that,  the  biologist  has  discovered  that  often  ap¬ 
parently  the  noblest  ethics  for  the  born,  work  dis¬ 
aster  to  the  unborn.  It  is  not  a  personal  nor  tribal 
nor  immediate  morality,  but  a  planetary,  cosmic, 
generational,  protoplasmic  ethics  that  alone  will 
make  men  really  righteous. 

It  is,  therefore,  no  extravagant  assumption  but 
the  surest  deduction  from  science  itself  that  science 
only  can  supply  mankind  with  the  true  technology 
of  the  will  of  God.  If  His  will  is  ever  to  be  done  on 
earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven,  it  will  have  to  be  done 
through  the  instrumentalities  of  science,  that  is 
through  the  use  of  intelligence.  Conscience  will 
have  to  look  through  the  microscope  if  it  ever  sees 
its  duty  aright.  The  most  earnest  sense  of  duty  will 
not  supply  men  with  the  true  objectives  of  that 
duty.  The  “spirit  of  Christ,”  which  we  are  glibly 
told  will  suffice  for  salvation,  is  majestic  in  its  im¬ 
pulse  and  in  its  objective,  but  sadly  lacking  in  any 
technique  for  connecting  the  two.  It  points  truly 
the  “steep  and  thorny  path  to  Heaven,”  but  it  sup¬ 
plies  no  engineering  details  for  making  the  ascent. 

In  fact  man  is  either  on  his  way  to  new  scenes 
and  changes,  new  varieties  of  untried  being  or 
else  he  is  in  fearful  danger  of  falling  into  naught. 
For  as  old  Cato  cried  from  his  prison  walls,  “If 
there  be  a  power  above  us,  and  that  there  is, 
all  nature  cries  aloud  through  all  her  works,  He 

19 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


must  delight  in  virtue.  And  what  He  delights  in 
must  be  happy.’ ’  But  again  he  cries,  4 ‘When  or 
where ?”  Science  answers,  “Here  and  now,  or  no* 
where  and  never.’ ’  This  world  was  not,  as  Cato  said, 
“made  for  Caesar.”  It  was  made  for  the  common 
man.  Indeed,  so  far  as  science  knows,  this  world 
was  not  made  for  anything.  It  simply  is.  It  is 
simply  here  for  this  organic  creature  man,  himself, 
who  is  the  outcome  of  its  multitudinous  but  friendly 
forces,  to  make  it  a  congenial  decent  home  to  live  in, 
love  in,  marry  in,  rear  his  children  in,  and  die  in.  So 
far,  except  in  limited  areas  and  for  brief  moments 
for  a  few  people  it  has  never  been  fit  for  any  of 
these  things.  For  most  people  it  has  been  merely  a 
place  to  fight  and  freeze  and  starve  in,  with  a 
snatch  now  and  then  of  wine  and  poetry  and  song. 
It  may  always  be  so.  It  may  be  that  man’s  only 
hope  is  to  “grunt  and  sweat  under  a  weary  load 
of  life”  on  the  bare  hazard  that  another  world  will 
right  the  ills  of  this.  But  science  is  lighting  the 
world  with  a  different  faith,  a  belief  founded  on 
knowledge,  that  this  world,  too,  can  be  made  clean 
and  sane  and  happy.  If  man  can  not  clean  up  this 
world  with  the  stupendous  cosmic  engine  of  science 
now  in  his  hands  he  does  not  deserve  another.  He 
will  have  to  receive  it  as  a  pittance  because  some¬ 
body  else  “atoned”  for  his  foolishness. 

But  the  scientist  can  not  be  daunted  with  the 
failure  of  one  generation  or  even  one  age.  He  looks 
to  the  long  results  of  time.  His  old  geology  has 
taught  him  patience.  But  he  believes  that  man  will 

20 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

cease  looking  solely  to  the  hills  which  the  Psalmist 
intimated  was  his  only  source  of  help,  and  look  closer 
about  him  and  within  him  into  his  own  psychology 
and  biology  in  order  to  aid  whatever  help  may  come 
from  on  high.  This  does  not  mean  necessarily  that 
what  lies  upon  and  beyond  those  hills  has  ceased  to 
stretch  a  friendly  hand  to  the  heart  that  trusts  them. 
The  scientist  knows  that  beyond  them  are  many 
things  not  within  his  ken.  He  knows,  as  the  mystic 
can  not  know,  that  beyond  them  lie  nobler  mysteries 
and  finer  adventures  of  the  spirit  than  the  mystic 
has  ever  dreamed.  But  the  things  that  lie  beyond 
he  believes  are  as  friendly  as  those  he  has  found  on 
this  side.  Consequently  without  troubling  he  trusts 
them.  He  believes  they  are  on  the  side  of  intelli¬ 
gence.  Instead  of  believing  that  religion  is  merely 
“morality  touched  with  emotion,”  and  that  such  a 
religion  will  furnish  a  ready  made  science  of  society, 
he  believes  that  intelligence  touched  with  emotion 
is  the  only  guide  to  morality.  That  kind  of  moral¬ 
ity  touched  with  emotion  is  religion.  And  that  kind 
of  religion  and  only  that  kind  will  induce  men  to 
clean  up  this  world,  instead  of  letting  its  filth  accu¬ 
mulate  in  the  belief  that  man’s  stay  here  below  is 
too  short  for  it  to  be  worth  while  to  make  the  place 
decent.  Men  have  been  dominated  by  this  belief  for 
ages  with  the  obvious  result  that  religion  and  mor¬ 
ality  have  scarcely  progressed  beyond  the  Stone 
Age.  We  are  still  in  the  Stone  Age  of  ethics. 
As  John  Dewey  in  substance  asks,  where  is  our 
science  of  society — our  moral  adjustments  of  men  to 

21 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


one  another — comparable  to  onr  progress  in  chem¬ 
istry  or  physics?  There  simply  is  no  such  progress, 
there  is  no  science  of  society,  because  men  have  not 
known  how  to  behave  toward  one  another — have  not 
known  until  this  age  of  science  how  to  be  righteous. 

But  at  last,  Your  Excellency,  men  do  know  how 
to  be  good.  Science  has  supplied  them  with  a 
true  technique  of  righteousness.  The  time  has  ar¬ 
rived  for  a  new  Decalogue,  a  new  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  a  new  Golden  Rule.  These  new  codes  of 
conduct  have  none  of  the  absolutism  of  the  old.  They 
are  fluid  as  evolution,  flexible  as  human  nature. 
Yet  the  new  dispensation  is  just  as  divine,  as  sacred, 
as  inspired  as  the  old.  It  is  filled  with  warnings  of 
wrath,  both  present  and  to  come,  for  the  biological 
ungodly,  as  well  as  with  alluring  promises  for  them 
wTho  do  His  scientific  will.  These  warnings  should 
first  make  you  tremble ;  they  should,  secondly,  make 
you  pray;  they  should,  thirdly,  fill  you  with  the 
militant  faith  of  a  new  evangel. 


THE  FIVE  WARNINGS 


THE  FIEST  WARNING 
That  the  Advanced  Races  Are  Going  Backward 

The  first  warning  which  biology  gives  to  states¬ 
manship  is  that  the  advanced  races  of  mankind  are 
going  backward;  that  the  civilized  races  of  the 
world  are,  biologically,  plunging  downward;  that 
civilization,  as  you  have  so  far  administered  it,  is 
self-destructive ;  that  civilization  always  destroys 
the  man  that  builds  it ;  that  your  vast  efforts  to  im¬ 
prove  man’s  lot  instead  of  improving  man  are  ha¬ 
stening  the  hour  of  his  destruction ;  that  the  brain  of 
man  is  not  growing ;  that  man  as  a  breed  of  organic 
beings  is  not  advancing ;  that  microbial  diseases  are 
chiefly  the  by-products  of  our  civilizations;  that 
these  microbial  diseases  are  apparently  decreasing, 
while  at  the  same  time  man’s  incapacity  to  resist 
them  is  probably  increasing;  that  the  great  physio¬ 
logical  diseases  of  man’s  body— heart  disease, 
Bright’s  disease,  diabetes,  cancer,  degenerative  dis¬ 
eases  of  the  arteries,  liver  and  central  organs — are 
increasing;  that  the  functional  neuroses,  the  dis¬ 
eases  that  affect  man’s  mind  and  behavior — neuras¬ 
thenia,  hysteria,  epilepsy,  insanity  and  the  multi¬ 
form  minor  mental  and  nervous  derangements  of 
function — are  probably  all  increasing;  that  weak¬ 
lings,  paupers,  hoboes  and  imbeciles  are  increasing; 

25 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  leadership  and  genius — great  men  and  first- 
class  workmen — are  decreasing. 

Lest  Your  Excellency  may  gain  the  impression 
that  I  merely  wish  to  alarm  you,  let  me  urge  you 
to  glance  at  the  chart  of  your  own  national  biology. 
You  recently  called  the  picked  youth  of  your  nation 
to  the  colors  and  found  that  practically  one-third 
of  them  were  physically  unfit  to  defend  their  coun¬ 
try.  Some  of  their  defects  could  be  remedied  by 
surgery  or  hygiene,  but  Dr.  Eugene  Lyman  Fisk, 
Medical  Director  of  the  Life  Extension  Institute 
of  New  York,  after  extended  statistical  analysis 
concludes  that  “the  total  rejection  rate  for  physical 
reasons  would  lie  between  thirty  and  forty  per 
cent.,  and  this  at  the  most  favorable  age  group,” 
that  is,  from  age  twenty-one  to  thirty-one. 

In  the  most  extensive  analytical  survey  ever 
made  of  our  national  physical  assets,  one  conducted 
bv  Doctor  Fisk,  in  collaboration  with  the  American 
Engineering  Societies,  and  at  the  suggestion  of  Sec¬ 
retary  of  Commerce,  Mr.  Herbert  Hoover,  just  pub¬ 
lished  under  the  title  Health  Building  and  Life  Ex¬ 
tension,  this  conclusion  is  expressed:  “So  far  from 
the  draft  records  giving  an  exaggerated  impression 
of  the  degree  of  physical  deficiency  that  prevails 
in  the  general  population,  it  is  clear  that  they  con¬ 
vey  an  under-estimation  of  the  true  conditions.  So 
far  as  they  go  they  may  well  arouse  concern  as  to 
the  physical  state  of  civilized  man,  but  much  must 
be  added  for  defects  unrecorded  (by  the  draft) 
which  may  in  later  life  impair  efficiency  and  lower 
resistance  to  disease.” 


26 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

The  British  Military  Committee,  as  quoted  by 
Doctor  Fisk,  summed  up  its  conclusions  on  British 
vitality  as  follows :  ‘  ‘  Of  every  nine  men  of  military 
age  in  Great  Britain  on  the  average  three  were  per¬ 
fectly  fit  and  healthy;  two  were  on  a  definitely  in¬ 
firm  plane  of  health  and  strength;  three  could  al¬ 
most  with  justice  be  described  as  physical  wrecks; 
and  the  remaining  man  as  a  chronic  invalid.”  Doc¬ 
tor  Fisk  further  states  it  as  “the  thesis  of  his 
book”  that  there  has  already  shown  up  an  increas¬ 
ing  death  rate  for  men  and  women  who  have 
reached  the  age  of  forty  and  even  of  thirty-five. 

Examination  of  large,  apparently  healthy  groups 
of  men  and  women  in  both  industrial  and  com¬ 
mercial  life  by  the  Life  Extension  Institute  dis¬ 
closes  at  least  fifty  per  cent,  in  need  of  medical  or 
surgical  attention.  Mr.  E.  E.  Bittenhouse,  actuary 
of  a  prominent  life  insurance  company,  states  that 
“diseases  of  the  heart,  circulation  and  kidneys  have 
apparently  increased  in  our  registration  states 
more  than  one  hundred  per  cent,  since  1880.”  Mr. 
J.  K.  Gore,  in  1916,  at  that  time  president  of  the 
Actuarial  Society  of  America,  stated  as  his  conclu¬ 
sion  that  “the  death  rate  is  increasing  at  the  higher 
age  periods  and  that  the  death  rate  from  diseases  of 
the  circulation  and  kidneys  had  increased  within 
this  generation  by  fifty  per  cent.”  While  on  the 
other  hand  the  most  extreme  conservative,  Freder¬ 
ick  I.  Hoffman,  a  distinguished  statistician,  believes 
this  increased  mortality  rate  is  not  yet  a  national 
menace,  yet  he  states,  as  quoted  by  Doctor  Fisk, 

27  ' 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


“that  affections  of  the  circulatory  and  urinary  or¬ 
gans  are  decidedly  more  common  in  a  fatal  form  in 
early  old  age  than  would  seem  necessary’ ’  in  the 
light  of  modern  preventive  measures. 

You  also  examined  by  the  latest  psychological 
methods  nearly  two  million  of  these  picked  young 
men  for  the  army  to  ascertain  their  mental  alertness 
or  proficiency.  You  have  also  within  the  past  few 
months  examined  by  much  more  highly  refined  and 
careful  methods,  through  your  educators,  some  two 
million  school  children.  While  just  what  phases  of 
the  physio-psychological  make-up  of  human  beings 
these  tests  do  measure  is  still  under  dispute  by 
those  most  competent  to  carry  on  such  a  contro¬ 
versy,  yet  the  results  of  testing  these  two  great  co¬ 
horts  of  individuals  are  in  the  main  mutually  har¬ 
monious  and  supporting.  The  majority  opinion  of 
these  competent  students  seems  at  this  date  safely 
to  be  that  they  did  to  an  encouraging  degree  sepa¬ 
rate  the  natural  quicks  from  the  natural  slows — 
those  who  had  the  inborn  ability  to  learn  slowly  or 
quickly,  at  least  in  the  two  fields  of  mentality, 
namely,  abstract  and  mechanical  thinking. 

Prof.  Edward  L.  Thorndike,  of  Columbia  Uni¬ 
versity,  one  of  the  wisest  of  living  men  and  a  leader 
in  this  field,  suggests  that  the  human  mind  is  made 
up  of  three  fairly  distinct  intelligences,  the  mechan¬ 
ical,  abstract  and  social.  One  might  think  also  of 
adding  two  others,  the  musical  and  artistic.  While 
they  all  overlap,  yet  there  are  marked  differences 
among  individuals,  in  the  relative  prominence  of  the 

28 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


three  types  of  intelligence.  The  abstract  and  mechani¬ 
cal  intelligences  were  probably  much  better  evalu¬ 
ated  by  these  tests  in  the  army  than  was  the  social 
intelligence.  The  general  moral  qualities,  such  as 
determination,  docility,  cooperativeness,  doggedness 
and  what  Prof.  June  Downey,  a  pioneer  in  experi¬ 
mental  measures  of  the  emotions,  calls  the  “will-tem¬ 
perament  complex,’ ’  were  not  accurately  measured 
in  the  soldiers,  although  they  were  somewhat  more 
accurately  delineated  among  the  school  children. 

However  the  proof  first  furnished  in  1906  by 
Frederick  Adams  Woods,  the  American  biologist, 
that  mental  and  moral  qualities  are  strongly  knit 
together  in  man’s  hereditary  constitution,  has  been 
followed  by  abundant  proof  that  all  good  qualities 
tend  to  be  associated  in  mortal  make-up.  Conse¬ 
quently  the  mentally  alert  were  beyond  question  on 
the  average  the  morally  sound.  The  executives 
and  moral  leaders  were  not  found  among  the  C 
minus,  D  and  E  classes  in  mental  quickness.  As  a 
result  the  most  exhaustive  measurement  will  prob¬ 
ably  never  very  radically  change  the  general  curve 
obtained  by  the  army  measurements.  No  one  has 
ever  claimed,  as  wrongly  inferred  by  some  hasty 
journalists,  that  these  tests  measure  intelligence  un¬ 
influenced  by  environment  or  education.  However, 
the  most  competent  students  believe  that  the  largest 
element  measured  was  native  intelligence  and  that 
this  intelligence  is  very  little  subject  to  increase  by 
education  although  proficiency  in  using  it  is  enor¬ 
mously  increased. 


29 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Intelligence  appears  to  me  to  be  the  thing  that 
enables  a  man  to  get  along  without  education.  Edu¬ 
cation  appears  to  be  probably  the  thing  that  enables 
a  man  to  get  along  without  the  use  of  his  intelli¬ 
gence.  Once  a  new  situation  is  comprehended  by  the 
intelligence  it  is  thereafter  largely  carried  on  by  the 
education  developed  from  the  experience.  Many 
other  definitions  could  be  given  of  the  word  intelli¬ 
gence,  but  if  here  we  limit  it  to  the  inborn  capacity 
of  a  man  to  meet  a  new  situation,  education  likely 
has  little  influence  in  increasing  it.  It  is  doubtless 
an  inherited  character  the  same  as  any  physical 
character,  as  abundant  evidence  has  been  collected 
to  prove. 

I  regret  lack  of  space  for  continuing  this  discus¬ 
sion  in  detail,  but  keeping  these  qualifications  in 
mind,  the  novel  situations  presented  by  these  mental 
tests  or  mental  alertness  tests,  aid  us  to  tell  which 
individuals  possess  intelligence  and,  for  most  prac¬ 
tical  purposes,  how  much  intelligence  they  possess 
as  compared  with  their  fellows.  No  one  knows 
how  much  a  watt  of  electricity  is  nor  how  much  a 
pound  of  steam,  but  engineers  know  what  each  will 
do,  and  can  compare  their  relative  power.  Conse¬ 
quently  in  comparing  men  with  each  other  as  to 
what  they  can  do  and  will  do,  the  tests  are  a  most 
effective  and  satisfactory  instrument  even  in  their 
present  undeveloped  state. 

Thus,  after  making  all  possible  allowances  a 
biologist  gains  a  strong  impression  from  modern 
mental  testing  that  one  of  the  outstanding  re- 

30 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

suits  of  civilization  is  that  it  has  made  the  world 
safe  for  stupidity.  A  very  significant  proportion  of 
these  adult  men  could  not  decide  such  momentous 
problems  as  the  following,  which  are  but  two  out  of 
a  large  series  put  to  them,  and  to  all  of  which  three 
ready  made  answers  were  suggested  by  the  exam¬ 
iners:  4 4 Why  are  cats  useful?  (1),  Because  they 
catch  mice;  (2),  because  they  are  gentle;  (3),  be¬ 
cause  they  are  afraid  of  dogs.”  Another  question 
was:  “Is  it  wiser  to  put  some  money  aside  and  not 
spend  it  all  so  that  you  may;  (1),  prepare  for  old 
age  or  sickness;  (2),  collect  all  the  different  kinds 
of  money;  (3),  gamble  when  you  wish.”  Many  men 
gave  wrong  answers  and  many  were  compelled  to 
acknowledge  their  inability  to  decide  such  important 
matters.  Since  you  have  thousands  of  such  men  and 
women,  each  casting  a  vote  upon  the  most  complex 
national  and  international  problems  and  each  vote 
equal  in  weight  to  those  of  the  editors  of  the  Army 
Report,  and  since  you  consider  the  voice  of  these 
thousands  to  be  the  voice  of  God,  it  calls  into  serious 
question  the  mental  alertness  of  the  latter. 

The  most  conservative  interpretation  I  am  able 
to  find  is  that  of  Col.  Robert  M.  Yerkes,  one  of  the 
chief  promoters  of  these  tests  and  an  editor  of  the 
Army  Report — the  famous  Memoir  XV.  He  con¬ 
cludes  that  at  least  fifty  million  people  in  this  coun¬ 
try  have  not  sufficient  brains  to  get  through  our  cer¬ 
tified  high  schools.  This  would  probably  indicate 
that  fifteen  or  twenty  million  can  not  go  beyond  the 
fourth  or  fifth  grade  and  the  other  thirty  million  of 

31 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


your  less  intelligent  moiety  are  scattered  along  be¬ 
tween  this  point  and  high-school  graduation.  Prob¬ 
ably  eighty-five  million,  Colonel  Yerkes  seems  to 
think,  will  be  compelled  to  stop  their  cultural  educa¬ 
tion  with  their  high-school  diplomas  from  lack  of 
that  type  of  intelligence  which  from  all  available  evi¬ 
dence  seems  to  be  the  best  for  general  citizenship.  It 
seems  likely  from  Colonel  Yerkes’  conclusions  that 
the  next  ten  million  can  make  only  moderate  college 
records,  and  that  only  the  top  four  million  or  five 
million  can  graduate  with  any  degree  of  brilliancy 
and  go  on  into  fields  of  independent,  abstract  and 
creative  thinking. 

It  is  highly  probable,  if  these  estimates  be  even 
approximately  correct,  that  fifty  or  sixty  voters  out 
of  every  one  hundred  who  are  constantly  clamoring 
for  “more  democracy ’ ’ — which  to  the  unintelligent 
means  more  power  and  not  more  wisdom — could  not 
possibly  understand  the  theory  and  workings  of 
democracy  if  getting  into  Heaven  depended  on  it. 

Of  course  there  is  a  vast  deal  of  personal  good¬ 
ness  and  of  sound  character  all  along  the  line,  but  I 
am  not  speaking  of  the  qualifications  which  will  ad¬ 
mit  a  man  to  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  but  of  those 
that  will  keep  us  out  of  a  hell  on  earth. 

But  all  these  facts  of  intelligence  and  physique 
need  not  in  themselves  greatly  alarm  you.  What¬ 
ever  our  intelligence  and  physique  may  be  it  is  all 
we  have.  I  am  not  at  this  moment  concerned  pri¬ 
marily  with  whether  our  intelligence  is  high  or  low 
but  with  its  prospective,  indeed  by  your  present 

32 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


methods,  its  certain  decline.  The  danger  to  this 
country  is  not  from  its  seventy  or  eighty  or  ninety 
millions  who  may  have  little  or  no  brains,  but  from 
its  five  or  ten  millions  who  have.  It  may  be  that 
to-morrow  some  necromancy  of  education  or  some 
ectoplasmic  injection  will  transform  our  twenty  or 
thirty  or  forty  per  cent,  of  social  and  political 
dunces  into  geniuses.  But  pending  that  possibility, 
the  psychologist  has  spread  here  before  you  the 
main  materials  of  democracy.  If  our  estimate  of 
these  materials  be  too  high  or  too  low  it  does  not 
greatly  matter.  No  nation  was  ever  overthrown  by 
its  imbeciles.  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum  and  for  that 
reason  weeds  out  the  heads  of  fools.  The  signifi¬ 
cant  thing  is  that  the  fools  are  increasing  and  those 
responsible  for  their  welfare  are  decreasing. 

For  you  defy  nature  with  your  civilization.  As 
President  Stanley  Hall  has  said:  “Man  has  not  yet 
demonstrated  that  he  can  remain  permanently  civ¬ 
ilized.”  Or  as  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester,  the  British 
biologist,  has  warned  you,  you  have  taken  evolution 
out  of  the  mighty  hand  of  nature  into  your  own 
feeble  one.  And  unless  you  have  the  courage  and 
intelligence  to  go  on  and  complete  the  task,  nature 
will  periodically  hurl  you  back  into  savagery — the 
red  sea  of  natural  selection — where  as  he  says,  she 
“will  wreak  upon  you  the  vengeance  which  she  al¬ 
ways  has  in  store  for  the  half-hearted  meddler  in 
great  affairs.”  Man  dare  not  be  a  half-hearted 
meddler  in  this  great  affair  of  his  own  evolution. 
He  has  egotistically  taken  it  into  his  own  hands,  and 

33 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


yet  so  far  has  used  scarcely  more  intelligence  than 
would  a  babe  who  had  had  placed  in  his  tiny  fingers 
the  cosmic  engine  that  guides  the  stars. 

Evolution  is  a  bloody  business,  but  civilization 
tries  to  make  it  a  pink  tea.  Barbarism  is  the  only 
process  by  which  man  has  ever  organically  prog¬ 
ressed,  and  civilization  is  the  only  process  by  which 
he  has  ever  organically  declined.  Civilization  is 
the  most  dangerous  enterprise  upon  which  man 
ever  set  out.  For  when  you  take  man  out  of  the 
bloody,  brutal  but  beneficent  hand  of  natural  selec¬ 
tion  you  place  him  at  once  in  the  soft,  perfumed, 
daintily  gloved  but  far  more  dangerous  hand  of  ar¬ 
tificial  selection.  And,  unless  you  call  science  to 
your  aid  and  make  this  artificial  selection  as  effi¬ 
cient  as  the  rude  methods  of  nature,  you  bungle  the 
whole  task.  And  you  are  doing  this  on  a  colossal 
scale  in  industrial  America. 

For  your  five  or  ten  millions  are  decreasing, 
while  your  eighty  or  ninety  millions  are  increasing. 
I  wonder  if  Your  Excellency  has  ever  heard  of  a  dif¬ 
ferential  birth  rate.  I  have  searched  through  the 
utterances  of  the  executives  of  this  and  other  lands 
for  any  intelligent  pronouncement  upon  the  subject. 
All  I  have  been  able  to  unearth  are  a  few  letters 
written  by  our  executives  to  congratulate  the  twen- 
ty-dollar-a-week  parents  of  a  dozen  or  more  twen- 
ty-dollar-a  week  children. 

As  Huxley  pointed  out,  the  character  of  the  birth 
rate  is  the  prime  original  basic  problem  of  all  poli¬ 
tics.  Nations  have  often  perished  because  of  a  dif- 

34 


i 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ferential  birth  rate.  A  difference  in  the  total  birth 
force  of  one  class  of  the  population  over  another 
of  even  one-tenth  of  a  baby  per  family  will  in  a 
short  time  alter  the  whole  character  and  destiny  of  a 
people.  You  have  established  a  difference  of  approx¬ 
imately  a  whole  baby  and  a  half  between  your  five 
or  ten  millions  and  your  eighty  or  ninety  millions. 

In  addition  to  this  ominous  phenomenon  you 
have  deliberately  introduced  within  the  past  two 
decades,  at  least  two  million  oppressed  peoples  of 
other  lands,  of  lower  intellectual  ability  than  your 
ten  million  or  more  negroes  already  on  hand.  Prof. 
Carl  Brigham  of  Princeton,  in  a  book  about  life 
which  I  commend  to  your  immediate  attention,  en¬ 
titled  A  Study  of  American  Intelligence ,  a  brilliant 
interpretation  of  the  mental  tests  of  the  army,  gives 
ample  evidence  that  especially  the  Nordic  elements 
of  our  population  are  being  forced  out  by  other  races 
whose  representatives  in  this  country  are  of  dis¬ 
tinctly  lower  average  mental  alertness  and  of  less 
social  coherence  and  political  capacity.  This  race 
has  contributed  a  vast  share  of  all  political  wisdom 
and  scientific  discovery  to  the  modern  world.  It  is 
probably  the  one  race  on  earth  wdiich  has  steadily 
advanced  in  these  respects  for  the  past  several 
thousand  years.  Had  we  invited  to  our  country 
better  representatives  of  these  other  races  the  whole 
problem  would  present  a  different  aspect.  It  would 
still,  however,  present  many  grave  difficulties,  since 
mixed  races  are  a  menace  in  the  operation  of  popu¬ 
lar  government. 


35 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Moreover,  all  modern  liberal  statesmanship — 
autocratic  statesmanship  never  makes  such  an  error 
— has  rested  its  case  upon  two  great  sentimental 
nebulosities,  first,  that  all  men  are  created  equal, 
especially  in  political  wisdom,  and,  second,  that 
God  will  raise  up  leaders  unto  the  people.  Well, 
all  men  are  created  unequal  in  all  respects  and  lead¬ 
ers  come  not  by  prayer  but  by  germ  cells.  Greece 
has  been  calling  for  her  galaxy  of  greatness  to  re¬ 
turn,  for  two  thousand  years,  but  it  has  not  come. 
The  poet  Browning  thought  that  if  only  the  ancient 
Greek  language  and  literature  could  be  taught  to 
her  people  again  they  would  with  loud  acclaim 
enter  once  more  into  the  spirit  of  her  beauty  and 
the  intellectual  capacity  to  reproduce  her  glory. 
But,  either  God  has  seen  fit  to  chastise  her,  or,  what 
is  more  probable,  the  heredity,  the  blood,  the  germ 
cells  from  which  her  leaders  sprang  have  been  bur¬ 
ied  in  her  enchanting  ruins. 

Spain  has  been  calling  for  three  hundred  years 
for  her  lost  world  influence,  but  I  think  Frederick 
Adams  Woods  has  mathematically  demonstrated 
that  her  real  glory  was  buried  with  the  blood  of  her 
great  kings.  Evolution  is  a  stern  taskmaster  that 
knows  no  compromise  and  grants  no  reprieve.  And 
the  biologist  can  not  avoid  the  apprehension  that 
you  are  plunging  our  nation  into  the  same  great  his¬ 
toric  slough  of  biological  despond. 

True,  even  with  our  present  intellectual  capacity, 
social  progress  is  far,  far  from  being  at  an  end. 
Even  a  whole  race  can  live  upon  borrowed  social, 

36 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


though  not  borrowed  biological  capital.  The  ideals 
of  Greece  have  enriched  every  social  order  of  the 
world.  The  mist  of  every  people’s  dreams  bequeaths 
a  more  potent  air  for  men  to  breathe  long  after 
their  ambitious  marbles  have  crumbled  into  dust. 
Nations  have  gone  through  a  renaissance  and 
climbed  to  national  excellence  without  the  slightest 
increase  in  the  mental  capacities  of  the  people.  But 
I  urge  you  to  reflect  that  this  has  taken  place  only 
when  two  things  were  present,  first,  those  social  and 
economic  conditions,  customs  and  ideals  which  re¬ 
sulted  in  a  high  birth  rate  among  the  abler  stocks, 
and,  second,  when  their  leaders  have  thought  freely 
and  bravely  upon  both  practical  affairs  and  the  con¬ 
cerns  of  the  spirit.  Without  the  first  being  present 
continuously,  the  second  phenomenon  soon  runs  its 
course.  The  final  test  of  democracy  is  its  capacity 
to  breed  leaders.  Nearly  all  changes  in  history 
have  been  brought  about  by  babies.  Up  to  a  genera¬ 
tion  ago  the  outstanding  biological  feature  of  our 
national  life  was  that  its  abler  ten  millions  produced 
more  babies  than  its  less  able  ninety  millions.  I 
commend  to  you  a  brilliant  study  of  this  problem  by 
Mr.  John  Corbin  in  his  significant  book,  The, Re¬ 
turn  of  the  Middle  Class.  So  long  as  our  sounder 
middle  class  breed  freely,  the  tide  of  any  nation’s 
genius  will  run  to  the  full. 

But  what  have  you — the  average  man  in  power 
— actually  accomplished  with  your  naive  meddling 
with  evolution?  Mr.  Alleyne  Ireland,  the  publicist, 
in  his  Democracy  and  the  Human  Equation — an- 

37 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

other  valuable  book  about  life  for  statesmen  to  pon¬ 
der — has  reached  a  remarkable  conclusion  from  the 
researches  of  Havelock  Ellis  and  Frederick  Adams 
Woods.  He  states  that  throughout  all  English  his¬ 
tory  down  to  the  opening  of  the  period  of  mass 
democracy,  about  1800,  approximately  one  out  of 
nine  national  leaders  sprang  from  the  laboring 
classes.  During  the  next  twenty-five  years  this  pro¬ 
portion  had  sunk  to  practically  one  out  of  fifteen. 
By  1850,  when  mass  democracy  had  run  only  the 
first  half-century  of  its  career,  this  proportion  had 
dropped  to  well-nigh  one  out  of  twenty- two!  It 
is  likely  now  scarcely  one  in  forty  or  fifty,  though 
nothing  but  inferential  impressions  are  available. 
Cattell  has  shown  that  in  America  not  a  single  day 
laborer’s  son  has  become  a  man  of  scientific  dis¬ 
tinction.  The  wholesale  rise  of  the  masses  to 
power  may  be  the  death  knell  of  their  biological 
progress.  Like  a  bottle  of  old  wine,  which,  when 
uncorked,  for  a  time  sparkles  and  fumes  with 
life  but  soon  becomes  inert  and  stale,  so  it  seems 
that  men,  when  freed  from  oppression  for  a  time 
bubble  with  genius.  But  ambition  is  sterilized  by 
its  own  success.  Indeed  without  biology  as  the 
basis  of  social  processes,  success  spells  failure 
and  achievement  brings  decay.  Like  caged  animals, 
those  who  rise  cease  to  breed.  And  soon  the  masses 
are  left  in  the  direst  poverty  known  to  man,  the 
poverty  of  natural  leadership.  Lincoln  thought 
that  the  Lord  must  love  common  people  or  He 
would  not  have  made  so  many  of  them.  A  biologist 

38 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


is  bound  to  suspect  that  you  had  some  hand  in  the 
process. 

You  will  perhaps  pardon  a  biologist  if  for  the 
moment  your  supreme  political  gesture  in  this  di¬ 
rection  during  the  past  seventy-five  years  in  America 
should  touch  his  sense  both  of  humor  and  pathos. 
You  have  proclaimed  that  men  are  born  equal  in 
social  and  political  wisdom,  and  rendered  the  Con¬ 
stitution  largely  obsolete  in  order  to  develop  the 
machinery  to  make  your  faith  effective.  But  you 
have  done  this  in  the  name  of  our  fathers,  who 
founded  an  aristo-republic  for  carrying  on  an 
aristo-democracy  and  who  placed  in  your  hands  a 
Constitution  especially  designed  to  frustrate  any 
such  ghastly  possibility.  They  had  no  faith  in  the 
people  as  a  mass,  and  tried  by  elaborate,  even  gro¬ 
tesque  checks  and  balances  to  counteract  their  pas¬ 
sions  and  nullify  their  obvious  lack  of  political  gen¬ 
ius.  You  have  reversed  the  whole  beneficent  process 
with  probably  profound  biological  consequences. 
Yet,  true  to  your  habit  of  assuming  Elijah’s  mantel 
to  cloak  your  lack  of  political  inspiration,  you  have 
done  it  in  the  name  of  the  fathers  who  thought  they 
had  put  such  fantastic  projects  under  lock  and  key. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  “the  most  unequal  thing 
in  the  world  is  the  equal  treatment  of  unequals.” 
Your  difficulty  is  not  that  men  are  too  unequal,  but 
they  are  not  unequal  enough.  “There  is  one  point 
in  which  all  men  are  exactly  alike  and  that  is  they 
are  all  different.”  The  more  you  equalize  oppor¬ 
tunity,  the  more  you  unequalize  men.  Indeed  the 

39 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


whole  aim  in  making  opportunity  equal  is  to  make 
men  unequal — to  draw  out  and  utilize  each  man’s 
individual  capacities,  emotions  and  powers.  And 
you  have  failed  beyond  all  calculation  to  make  op¬ 
portunity  equal  in  anything  except  the  privilege  to 
vote  upon  measures  so  complex  that  genius  can  only 
partly  comprehend  them.  For,  when  you  give  the 
born  hod-carrier,  the  born  poet,  the  born  philoso¬ 
pher  and  the  born  statesman  similar  training  and 
education,  similar  social  and  political  privileges  and 
obligations,  and  hold  before  them  similar  economic 
rewards,  you  have  not  given  unequal  men  equal  op¬ 
portunity.  You  have  given  unequal  men  the  same 
opportunity.  You  have  tried  to  make  the  poet  a 
machinist  and  the  astronomer  a  tinsmith.  You 
have  failed  utterly  in  the  supreme  objective  of  po¬ 
litical  mechanics — the  equalizing  of  opportunity. 
Instead,  you  have  fatuously  tried  to  equalize  men. 

As  a  grand  net  result  of  this  ungodly  equal- 
itarianism  you  have  multiplied  economic  injustice 
on  the  one  hand  and  absolutely  enforced  biological 
injustice  on  the  other.  And  these  two  forms  of  in¬ 
justice  have  set  up  economic,  social,  educational,  and 
even  moral  and  religious  forces  which  are  rapidly 
forcing  your  best  blood  to  the  biological  wall.  These 
forces  are  rapidly  selecting  out  the  priceless  germ 
cells  of  your  ten  million  superiors  from  the  national 
blood  stream.  From  this  ten  million  always  have 
and  always  will  come  nearly  ninety  per  cent,  of  your 
real  intellectual  leaders.  And  once  the  germ  cells 
of  your  ten  millions  are  lost  nothing  is  left  except 

40 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  stern  but  effective  discipline  of  barbarism  until, 
finally,  out  of  a  sea  of  blood,  natural  selection  can 
again  lift  your  leaders.  In  that  distant  day  your 
ideals,  your  institutions,  your  very  bones,  will  be 
only  material  to  puzzle  and  delight  the  mind  of  the 
historian  and  the  paleontologist. 


THE  SECOND  WAENING 


That  Heredity  Is  the  Chief  Maker  of  Mek 

The  second  warning  of  biology  to  statesmanship 
is  brief  and  simple :  that  heredity  and  not  environ¬ 
ment  is  the  chief  maker  of  men ;  that  it  is  essentially 
the  man,  who  in  the  long  run  makes  his  environment, 
much  more  than  it  is  the  environment  wThich  makes 
the  man ;  that  man  is  not  a  pawn  on  the  chess-board 
of  environment,  the  football  of  circumstance  and  the 
puppet  of  chance  and  change ;  that  he  is  not  a  will- 
o’-the-wisp  of  fortune,  a  marionette  whose  wires 
are  pulled  by  the  hidden  hand  of  doom;  that  he  is 
not,  as  the  glib  reformer  has  taught  you  to  believe, 
the  helpless  victim  of  the  passing  education,  phi¬ 
losophy  and  theories  of  pedagogy  of  his  time;  but 
that,  in  the  germ  cell,  from  which  every  man  is  bom, 
there  are  resident  those  powerful  personal  forces 
by  which  he  can  rise  in  well-nigh  any  environment 
and,  within  the  limits  of  human  freedom,  exclaim: 
“I  am  the  master  of  my  fate;  I  am  the  captain  of  my 
soul.” 

The  social  and  political  import  of  this  warning 
is  that  nearly  all  the  happiness  and  nearly  all  the 
misery  of  the  world  are  due,  not  to  environment,  but 
to  heredity;  that  the  differences  among  men  are,  in 
the  main,  due  to  the  differences  in  the  germ  cells 

42 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


from  which  they  are  born ;  that  social  classes,  there¬ 
fore,  which  you  seek  to  abolish  by  law,  are  ordained 
by  nature;  that  it  is,  in  the  large  statistical  run  of 
things,  not  the  slums  which  make  slum  people,  but 
slum  people  who  make  the  slums ;  that  primarily  it 
is  not  the  Church  which  makes  people  good,  but 
good  people  who  make  the  church;  that  godly  peo¬ 
ple  are  largely  born  and  not  made ;  that  if  you  want 
church  members  you  will  have  to  give  nature  a 
chance  to  produce  them;  that  if  you  want  artists, 
poets,  philosophers,  skilled  workmen  and  great 
statesmen  you  will  also  have  to  give  nature  a  chance 
to  breed  them. 

You  are  opposed  to  this  belief.  You  believe  you 
can  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow’s  ear,  get  blood 
out  of  turnips,  find  Lincolns  in  every  log  cabin  by 
looking  hard  enough,  and  get  genius  out  of  fools. 
You  believe  that  the  reason  one  man  starts  at  the 
bottom  of  the  ladder  and  climbs  up  while  another 
starts  at  the  top  and  slides  down  is  due  to  the  lad¬ 
der  being  wrong  end  up.  Science  knows  it  is  due, 
chiefly,  to  the  inborn  differences  between  the  climb¬ 
er  and  the  slider.  Your  environmental  remedy  is 
to  kick  the  ladder  from  under  both  and  put  them  on 
the  same  level.  You  thus  deprive  each  of  any  means 
of  rapid  and  easy  transportation  to  his  natural 
destination. 

Your  childlike  democratic  faith  that  genius  is 
ubiquitous  and  leadership  potential  under  the  most 
empty  pate,  waiting  only  to  be  called  forth  by  God 
or  a  majority  vote,  dominates  three-fourths  of  your 

43 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


legislative  gestures.  The  “cult  -  of  the  incompe¬ 
tent/ J  the  belief  that  incompetency  is  merely  re¬ 
pressed  genius,  constitutes  your  credo.  Lester  F. 
Ward,  perhaps  the  most  dominant  sociologist  of  the 
past  generation,  speaks  frankly  your  basic  biologi¬ 
cal  naivete.  After  informing  us,  with  elaborate  de¬ 
scriptive — not  analytical — statistics  that  ‘ 4 genius 
follows  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,”  that  ‘ ‘genius 
is  everywhere,  waiting  only  to  be  called  forth  by 
economic  conditions,”  (as  though  your  present  cha¬ 
otic  economic  conditions  were  not  at  this  moment 
calling  for  this  “ unlimited  supply”  of  genius  to 
come  forth  and  assume  its  power)  Professor  Ward, 
as  follows,  voices  your  political  biology : 

“The  only  consolation,  the  only  hope,  lies  in  the 
truth  that,  so  far  as  native  capacity,  the  potential 
quality,  the  ‘promise  and  potency ’  of  a  higher  life 
are  concerned,  those  swarming,  spawning  millions, 
the  bottom  layers  of  society,  the  proletariat,  the 
working  classes,  the  ‘hewers  of  wood  and  drawers 
of  water/  nay,  even  the  denizens  of  the  slums — that 
all  these  are  by  nature  the  peers  of  the  boasted 
‘aristocracy  of  brains’  that  now  dominates  society 
and  looks  down  upon  them  and  the  equals,  in  all  but 
privilege,  of  the  most  enlightened  teachers  of 
eugenics.” 

No  responsible  sociologist  nor  psychologist  to-day 
believes  anything  of  the  kind.  No  biologist  ever  did 
believe  it.  If  it  is  true  then  we  do  not  know  any¬ 
thing.  So  astute  an  observer  as  Jesus  evidently  did 
not  believe  it  when  He  pointed  out  that  some  men 

44 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


have  one  talent,  some  two  and  others  five.  He  also 
recognized  its  tremendous  practical  consequences 
when  He  made  the  five  talent  man  ruler  over 
many  cities  and  dismissed  the  man  of  one  tal¬ 
ent  brains  and  one  talent  morals  from  five  talent 
social  responsibility.  But  notwithstanding  this 
great  example,  you  still  frequently  elect  the  one  tal¬ 
ent  man  to  office,  and  prefer  the  two  talent  average 
to  the  expert  with  five.  This  same  Teacher  added 
upon  this  occasion  one  of  the  most  manifest  rubrics 
of  statesmanship,  when  He  said,  “Unto  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given.”  In  proof  that  the  Master  here 
spoke  one  of  the  profoundest,  most  far-reaching 
statements  of  true  biology,  and  therefore  of  true 
statesmanship,  may  I  relate  to  Your  Excellency,  a 
simple  experiment? 

Prof.  Edward  L.  Thorndike  selected  a  group  of 
people  who  could  solve  a  certain  number  of  simple 
problems  in  arithmetic  in  fifteen  minutes.  He  then 
selected  a  second  group  who  could  solve  twice  as 
many  similar  problems  in  the  same  time.  Following 
this  he  gave  both  groups  an  equal  amount  of  prac¬ 
tise. 

The  result  contradicts  all  your  faith  in  the  equal 
“promise  and  potency”  of  men.  The  slow  group 
advanced  a  little,  the  fast  group  advanced  greatly. 
In  the  end,  as  the  direct  result  of  equalizing  oppor¬ 
tunity,  the  fast  group  was  further  ahead  than  ever! 

No  society  can  be  called  civilized  that  does  not 
give  all  men  equal  rights  and  equal  opportunities. 
But  it  can  not  give  men  equal  brains.  Every  man 

45 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


should  be  educated  and  given  a  chance,  but  you  can 
only  give  him  his  chance — the  chance  of  his  inborn 
powers.  No  system  of  education  can  put  brains  into 
empty  skulls.  It  can  only  develop  what  is  there. 
Even  college,  as  George  Horace  Lorimer  has  said, 
4 4 does  not  make  fools,  it  develops  them.”  All  men 
come  up  by  education,  but  4  4  the  brighter  they  are 
the  quicker  they  come”  and  the  farther  they  go. 

Dull  people  learn  slowly  and  advance  slowly  to 
low  positions.  Brilliant  people  learn  rapidly  and 
advance  rapidly  to  high  positions — so  long  as  you 
do  not,  as  you  often  do,  put  a  premium  upon  stu¬ 
pidity.  You  fill  many  of  your  offices  with  4  4  hon¬ 
est”  but  stupid  Johns  and  4 4 faithful  Joes”  shining 
with  incompetency.  But,  barring  this,  the  benefit 
of  a  rich  and  varied  environment  is  that  everybody, 
both  dull  and  bright,  can  advance  to  much  higher 
positions.  It  is  no  paradox  to  say  that  environment 
is  all-important  and  heredity  is,  likewise,  all-im¬ 
portant.  Both  are  absolute.  But,  barring  your  in¬ 
terference,  no  social  order  or  economic  system  can 
very  much  change  the  relative  positions  of  men. 
The  bright  will  always  be  ahead  and  the  dull  will 
always  be  behind. 

Since  nearly  three-fourths  of  your  efforts  are 
directed  toward  reversing  this  natural  order  of 
things,  may  I  ask  Your  Excellency  a  few  random 
questions!  Why  is  it  that  of  two  brothers  under  my 
observation  in  the  same  environment,  one  entered 
the  United  States  Senate,  while  the  other  all  his  life 
has  conducted  a  fourth  class,  small  town  restau- 

46 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


rant?  Why  has  one  of  our  greatest  publicists  an 
imbecile  brother  and  a  wayward  sister!  Why,  of 
two  brothers,  reared  under  the  same  roof,  with  the 
same  parental  influence,  does  one  become  a  village 
loafer  and  the  other  a  philosopher?  Why,  out  of 
the  first  fifty-one  names  in  the  Hall  of  Fame,  are 
ten  of  them  the  sons  and  daughters  of  preachers? 
Why  is  one  out  of  twelve  of  all  the  names  in  Who ’s 
Who ,  our  most  democratic  roster  of  fame,  the  child 
of  a  minister?  Is  it  necessary  for  me  to  present 
proof  to  you  that  ministers  are  on  the  average  men 
of  character  and  intelligence  ?  Why  out  of  the  first 
forty-six  names  in  the  Hall  of  Fame,  have  twenty- 
six  of  them  from  one  to  three  relatives  of  national 
renown?  Does  it  not  argue  that  they  probably  be¬ 
long  to  great  breeds,  truly  noble  strains  of  blood? 
Why  is  it,  that  if  you  are  born  from  certain  strains 
of  blood  you  have  one  chance  in  five  of  having  a 
celebrated  relative,  and  if  from  other  strains  your 
chance  in  this  respect  is  hardly  one  in  a  thousand? 
Why  has  the  Edwards  family,  living  in  thirty-three 
different  countries,  under  differing  environments, 
out  of  one  thousand  four  hundred  members  given  us 
one  thousand  four  hundred  social  servants,  many  of 
world  distinction,  while  the  Ishmael  family,  studied 
by  Estabrook,  out  of  approximately  fifteen  thousand 
members  has  given  us  nearly  fifteen  thousand  social 
scourges  ? 

We  saw  it  stated  but  yesterday  by  one  of  the 
foremost  political  organs  of  the  nation,  one  which 
stands  for  genuine  progress,  that  “  there  is  no 

47 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

evidence  of  the  inheritance  of  intelligence.  ’ 9  Onr  bio¬ 
logical  libraries  are  filled  with  this  evidence.  Eith¬ 
er  yon  must  admit  that  you  have  builded  such  a  gro¬ 
tesque  social  order  that  intelligence  is  no  use  to  a 
man;  or  else  intelligence,  as  evidenced  by  achieve¬ 
ment,  is  inherited.  I  can  not  present  the  highly  tech¬ 
nical  proof,  but  every  biologist  knows  that  intelli¬ 
gence  is  inherited,  energy  is  inherited,  insanity  is 
inherited,  emotional  possibilities  are  inherited,  a 
man’s  inner  character  is  inherited.  Environment 
is  important,  education  is  important,  moral  suasion 
is  important  just  because  intelligence,  energy  and 
character  are  inherited,  and  for  no  other  reason. 

Your  fear  is  that  this  is  not  optimistic  but 
pessimistic.  Science  is  not  concerned  with  such 
words.  Its  business  is  to  find  out  how  the  universe 
works,  in  the  hope  that  you  will  adjust  your  phi¬ 
losophy  to  a  universe  that  is,  instead  of  one  that  is 
not.  But  is  it  optimistic  to  believe  that  your 
fundamental  character  and  intelligence  are  due  to 
the  mere  chance  that  you  had  a  good  teacher,  read 
a  good  book,  heard  a  good  sermon  or  were  born  in  a 
good  town!  If  so  then  all  the  people  born  in  good 
towns,  with  good  books,  sermons  and  teachers  ought 
to  be  good.  Does  your  observation  confirm  this  be¬ 
lief?  Those  bom  in  bad  towns  and  in  the  slums 
should  all  be  bad.  But  do  you  not  constantly  see 
genius  and  character  rising  from  the  mire  and  folly 
and  degeneracy  flourishing  in  high  places?  As 
Hans  Christian  Andersen  said,  “It  matters  not  if 
you  were  born  in  a  duck  pond,  provided  that  you 

48 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

were  born  from  a  swan  egg.”  Again,  as  Sir  Thom¬ 
as  Brown  said,  4 ‘Lift  not  np  thy  hands  and  give 
thanks  to  heaven  that  thou  wert  born  in  Athens,  but 
that  integrity,  nobility  and  honor  lay  in  the  same 
egg  and  came  into  the  world  with  thee.” 

If  a  man’s  character  is  due  to  his  surroundings 
then  should  he  happen  to  fall  among  thieves,  he  has 
precisely  the  same  chance  as  they  of  committing  mur¬ 
der  and  getting  hung  within  a  week.  Moreover, 
one  could  not  form  the  slightest  idea  what  sort  of  a 
man  he  may  be  ten  years  hence,  for  he  may  find  him¬ 
self  amid  totally  different  surroundings.  War  may 
disrupt  the  world.  But  so  long  as  the  sound  hered¬ 
ity  of  the  race  is  not  destroyed  the  people  will 
rise  from  its  ashes  and  build  a  civilization  of  polish 
and  grandeur  again. 

I  could  cite  volumes  of  evidence,  but  I  urge  you 
to  examine  at  your  leisure  three  lines  of  proof: 
first,  the  Royal  Families  of  Europe,  second,  the 
studies  made  of  twins,  and,  third,  the  conduct  of  our 
Pilgrim  forefathers. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  compare  the  Royal  Fam¬ 
ilies  of  Europe  with  mankind  in  general,  but  Fred¬ 
erick  Adams  Woods  in  a  noble  research  has  com¬ 
pared  them  with  one  another.  I  commend  this  study 
to  every  student  of  statecraft.  Over  a  period  of 
five  centuries,  he  finds  the  geniuses  are  nearly  all 
grouped  together  by  the  bond  of  close  blood  rela¬ 
tionship;  the  imbeciles  and  degenerates  are  linked 
by  the  same  invisible  bond,  while  mediocrity,  mor¬ 
ality,  and  other  striking  mental  traits  occur  in  the 

49 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


blood  groups  as  expected.  In  fact  this  cautious 
student  concludes  that  it  is  perfectly  startling  how 
“herdity  explains  nearly  ninety  per  cent,  of  the 
rough  outlines  of  the  character  and  intelligence ’  ’ 
exhibited  by  these  privileged  persons. 

Professor  Thorndike  and  others  have  by  elabor¬ 
ate  methods  studied  the  heredity  of  twins.  As  you 
may  have  observed  some  of  these  remarkable  be¬ 
ings  are  almost  identical,  while  others  resemble 
each  other  very  little.  When  placed  under  similar 
environment  their  likenesses  do  not  increase  nor 
their  divergences  come  closer  together.  And  vice 
versa  under  dissimilar  conditions  those  which  are 
born  nearly  identical  remain  nearly  identical  and 
the  divergences  among  them  do  not  appreciably 
increase.  Professor  Thorndike  sums  up  his  ex¬ 
tensive  treatment  in  these  words  which  should  con¬ 
vey  a  solemn  meaning  to  statesmen:  “The  facts 
then  are  easily,  simply  and  completely  explained 
by  one  simple  hypothesis:  namely,  that  the  natures 
of  the  germ  cells — the  conditions  of  conception — 
cause  whatever  similarities  and  differences  exist  in 
the  original  natures  of  men,  that  these  conditions 
influence  body  and  mind  equally,  and  that  in  life, 
the  differences  in  modification  of  body  and  mind 
which  are  produced  by  such  differences  as  obtain 
between  the  environments  of  present-day  New 
York  City  public  school  children  are  slight.’ ’  If 
you  are  a  resident  of  New  York  City  I  think  you 
will  agree  without  argument,  that  the  differences  in 
environment  between  the  children  of  Fifth  Avenue 

50 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

and  those  of  the  lower  east  side  are  as  great  as 
could  well  be  brought  about  by  any  other  form  of 
economic  anarchy. 

Lastly  will  you  contemplate  with  me  the  conduct 
of  our  Pilgrim  forefathers  and  contrast  it  with  one 
or  two  other  large  scale  exhibitions  of  the  original 
natures  of  men?  The  Pilgrims  landed  in  a  wilder¬ 
ness  and  immediately  felled  trees  and  from  the  logs 
built  an  academy  for  training  the  intellect  and  spirit. 
Their  descendants  have  furnished  many  times  as 
many  leaders  to  the  nation  as  their  numbers  justify. 
A  startling  number  of  your  immigrants  of  the  past 
generation  have  devoted  themselves  to  putting 
bombs  under  these  institutions  although  their  en¬ 
vironment  was  a  thousand  times  better.  Another 
contrast  is  furnished  by  the  convicts  which  England 
sent  to  a  new  country  at  Sidney,  Australia.  They 
had  as  good  a  “ chance’ ’  as  the  Pilgrims,  yet  they 
have  in  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  succeeded  only 
in  building  the  largest  slums  in  the  world. 

I  have,  this  moment,  had  laid  on  my  table  by  the 
postman  the  report  of  a  body  of  social  workers  sup¬ 
ported  by  public  money.  They  are  devoted  to  the 
care,  and  unwittingly  to  the  propagation,  of  found¬ 
lings.  They  state  with  actual  hurrahs  that  heredity 
doesn’t  count.  They  prove  this  by  citing  children 
of  unknown  ancestry  who  have  turned  out  well ! 

This  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  statistics — God 
save  the  word — -by  which  you  have  always  at¬ 
tempted  to  prove  that  heredity — man’s  inner  nat¬ 
ure,  his  natural  endowments  of  intelligence  and 

51 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


character — are  of  no  importance  in  the  affairs  of 
men.  The  Army  Mental  Tests  hardly  gave  us  faith 
in  the  “unlimited  promise  and  potency”  of  the  C 
minus,  D  and  D  minus  men.  For  defending  your 
country  at  least,  these  were  the  chief  things  they 
lacked.  And  the  thing,  astounding  to  you,  but  an 
old  story  to  the  biologist,  was  that  they  were  main¬ 
ly  the  sons  of  C  minus,  D  and  D  minus  fathers  and 
mothers. 

“Promise  and  potency,”  Your  Excellency,  are 
the  only  hope  of  a  nation,  and  they  are  handed  down 
with  unerring  certainty  from  father  to  son.  So  long 
as  you  fill  the  land  with  children  who  possess  them, 
you  need  have  little  concern  that  environment  will 
be  neglected.  Inner  promise  and  inborn  potency 
are  the  two  things  that  create  a  promising  and  po¬ 
tential  environment,  and  nothing  else  will.  Nations 
are  made  and  unmade  at  the  marriage  altar.  No 
nation  can  live  by  heredity  alone,  nor  by  environ¬ 
ment  alone.  Both  are  important,  but  you  have  pro¬ 
ceeded  as  though  heredity  mattered  not  at  all. 

Environment  is  important,  but  rich  or  poor  en¬ 
vironment  is  but  the  outward  mark  of  the  wealth  or 
poverty  of  either  individual  or  national  blood.  There 
are  two  kinds  of  poverty,  economic  poverty  and  bio¬ 
logical  poverty.  You  can  not  rid  the  world  of  either 
by  attending  solely  to  one.  So  far  you  have  done 
this.  Your  educators  and  sociologists  are  sweeping 
far  ahead  of  you.  You  should  follow  them.  But, 
heredity  is  primary  and  basic  to  all  else.  Every 
statesman  who  forgets  this  will  perish  and  carry 

5? 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


his  state  down  with  him.  But  when  the  statesman 
makes  the  clay  out  of  which  his  people  are  made, 
their  physical  and  mental  heredity,  the  first  object 
of  his  solicitude  his  nation  will  weather  all  the  vicis¬ 
situdes  of  time.  Only  such  a  nation  will  or  can 
transform  its  petty  patriotisms  for  national  ag¬ 
grandizement  into  a  passion  for  national  character. 
Such  a  true  biological  patriotism  will  give  opu¬ 
lence  to  a  nation’s  culture,  vitality  to  its  ethics  and 
permanence  to  its  spiritual  dominion,  because  its 
end  and  aim  will  be  constantly  to  elevate  the  level 
of  its  human  blood  stream  and  keep  its  currents 
rich,  regnant  and  alive. 


THE  THIRD  WARNING 


That  the  Golden  Rule  without  Science  Will 
Wreck  the  Race  That  Tries  It 

The  third  warning  of  biology  is  that  charity  and 
philanthropy  and  your  noble-hearted  but  often 
soft-headed  schemes  for  ameliorating  the  conditions 
of  life  without  at  the  same  time  improving  the 
quality  of  life  have  failed  and  will  fail  to  improve 
the  human  breed  and  are,  in  fact,  hastening  its  de¬ 
terioration. 

You  are  the  best  hearted  man,  Your  Excellency, 
that  I  know.  You  have  a  positive  passion  for  do¬ 
ing  good.  The  milk  of  human  kindness  actually 
oozes  from  your  pores.  You  are  willing  at  a  mo¬ 
ment’s  notice  to  vote  any  amount  of  money  to  re¬ 
lieve  the  homeless,  fatherless  and  distressed.  You 
gain  an  enormous  number  of  votes  because  you  are 
in  reality  “the  poor  man’s  friend.”  You  mean  to 
be  his  real  friend.  I  am  never  concerned  with  what 
is  in  your  heart,  but  only  with  what  is  in  your  head. 
You  would  like  to  do  well.  But  hell  is  paved  with 
similar  pious  intentions.  You  should  first  pave  this 
world  with  intelligence  and  light  it  with  wisdom. 
This  is  not  a  task  for  goodness  of  heart  only,  but 
also  for  soundness  of  head. 

You  should  look  beyond  the  next  election  to  the 

54 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


next  generation.  It  is  there  that  many  of  your  * 
measures  will  have  their  greatest  effects.  You 
fondly  imagine  you  can  speed  up  evolution  with 
cakes  and  cream  for  the  unfit.  But  nature  has  pro¬ 
gressed  by  letting  the  devil  take  the  hindmost.  Your 
method  is  to  increase  the  number  of  the  hindmost. 
Nature  slaughters  the  innocents,  but  you  merely 
throw  more  innocents  into  her  ravenous  maw.  Your 
very  mercy  often  only  adds  to  nature’s  brutality. 
If  there  really  were  enough  money  to  pay  skilled 
people  to  take  care  of  less  efficient  people,  to  care 
for  still  less  efficient  ones,  to  care  for  those  still 
lower  in  the  scale  and  so  on  ad  infinitum  your 

scheme  would  be  ideal.  Thackerav  said  there  was 

«/ 

“no  Irishman  so  poor  but  that  he  had  a  still  poorer 
Irishman  living  off  of  him.”  Your  scheme  is,  in¬ 
deed,  ideal  in  every  point  except  one — that  it  won’t 
work.  Perpetual  motion  machines  have  the  same 
minor  defect.  They  run  for  a  time  and  are  perfect 
in  everything  except  perpetuity.  Gravitation  finally 
takes  its  toll.  So  in  time  will  nature  take  her  utter¬ 
most  farthing  from  your  plan  for  regenerating  the 
world  by  coddling  the  incompetent.  You  think  your 
cakes  and  cream  will  hasten  the  millennium.  But  a 
millennium  for  the  unfit  would  be  a  biological  hell 
for  the  fit. 

There  are  three  inherent  biological  difficulties 
with  your  method.  First,  that  mental,  moral  and 
physical  qualities  are  all  strongly  inherited.  All 
through  nature,  like  begets  like.  “Like  father,  like 
son”  is  older  than  Eden.  Pauperism  is  as  distinctly 

55 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


inherited  as  the  capacity  to  create  wealth,  I  know 
one  family  in  which  in  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
not  a  single  member  has  saved  up  five  hundred  dol¬ 
lars.  They  lived  all  that  time  among  associates  who 
created  and  saved  thousands,  even  millions.  The 
second  difficulty  is  that  such  people  reproduce  as 
freely  as  their  more  highly  endowed  neighbors. 
And  third,  there  is  no  correlation  between  fertility 
and  intelligence  or  any  other  feature  of  spiritual 
excellence.  By  this  I  mean  that  stupid  people  beget 
children  as  freely  as  bright  people.  The  latter  take 
care  of  their  children  better  and  rear  more  to  ma¬ 
turity.  For  that  reason,  if  you  let  things  alone,  the 
superiors  will,  in  the  long  run,  outbreed  the  infer¬ 
iors.  But  there  is  always  enough  of  the  latter  left 
to  make  a  serious  problem.  A  problem  which  you 
“  solve  ”  by  merely  making  it  greater  and  more  dif¬ 
ficult. 

It  is  said  that  Daniel  Webster,  when  called  upon 
to  pay  a  bill,  would  give  a  promissory  note  for  it 
with  the  satisfying  remark,  “Well,  thank  God!  that 
bill’s  paid.”  You  are  following  the  same  plan  of 
circular  finance.  You  are  trying  to  pay  your  over¬ 
due  bills  to  evolution  with  promissory  notes. 
Any  man  who  intelligently  examines  his  tax  sched¬ 
ule  and  discovers  that  in  many  states  from  one- 
fourth  to  one-third  of  it  goes  to  take  care  of  de¬ 
fectives  and  the  socially  inadequate  must  realize 
that  these  promissory  notes  are  rapidly  falling  due. 
Dr,  Harry  H.  Laughlin,  of  the  Eugenics  Record 
Office  of  the  Carnegie  Institution,  in  an  admirable 

56 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


memoir  to  Congress  has  shown  that  for  a  genera¬ 
tion  you  have  been  bringing  immigrants  into  your 
land  “to  develop  its  natural  resources”  who  fur¬ 
nish  from  two  to  three  times  the  quota  of  your  old 
native  stocks  to  fill  your  eleemosynary  institutions. 
This  takes  no  account  of  the  enormous  number  not 
confined,  but  breeding  further  potential  inmates 
with  undiminished  vigor.  Can  you  develop  your 
natural  resources  by  polluting  at  its  source  your 
greatest  natural  resource,  the  blood  of  your  people  ? 

You  think  that  this  applies  the  Golden  Rule.  It 
is  a  flattering  unction  and  gains  you  many  votes. 
But  the  Golden  Rule,  as  thus  falsely  conceived,  will 
wreck  the  race  that  tries  it.  As  I  ride  over  the 
country  in  its  marvelous  trains,  created  not  by 
the  masses  to  whom  you  have  given  power,  but  by  a 
few  unique  and  wonderful  minds  from  whom  in  the 
main  you  have  withheld  power,  I  see  from  every 
car  window  the  results  of  your  perverted  version  of 
the  Golden  Rule. 

I  see  it  filling  jails,  penitentiaries,  reforma¬ 
tories,  rescue  homes,  and  asylums — mute  monu¬ 
ments  to  your  belated  efforts  to  dam  the  ever- swell¬ 
ing  tide  of  degeneracy  which  this  kind  of  Golden 
Rule  has  largely  created.  They  are  merely  catch¬ 
alls  for  the  products  of  your  impertinent  meddling 
with  evolution.  Scarcely  a  dollar  of  this  vast  ex¬ 
penditure  for  cure  have  you  spent  for  real  preven¬ 
tion.  You  provide  orphan  homes  for  the  abandoned 
and  fatherless.  This  has  a  heart-breaking  appeal 
and  to  satisfy  it  you  can  easily  secure  millions,  But 

57 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  next  election  is  too  close  for  you  to  see  what  will 
happen  to  the  next  generation. 

You  have  spent  only  a  few  paltry  pennies,  at  the 
plea  of  wiser  men,  to  find  out  why  children  are  left 
fatherless,  and  why  they  had  no  uncles,  aunts,  cous¬ 
ins  or  relatives  competent  to  provide  them  with 
homes.  Part  of  the  reason  is  plainly  had  environ¬ 
ment,  bad  economic  conditions,  bad  laws,  bad  dis¬ 
tribution  of  wealth,  lack  of  education.  Every  biolo¬ 
gist  knows  this  without,  as  one  of  your  enthusiasts 
writes  me,  “laughing  and  crying”  through  reports 
of  rescued  children  who  turned  out  well.  They 
ought  to  turn  out  well  since  most  of  them  are  pretty 
good  children  and  all  worth  saving.  But  their  stock 
was  not  quite  good  enough  to  provide  homes  for 
them  and  consequently  you  have  to  do  it  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  other  people  who  have  all  the  children  of 
their  own  they  can  possibly  properly  care  for. 

The  biologist  knows  without  any  laughing  or 
crying  that  an  enormous  portion  of  bad  economic 
conditions  and  lack  of  education  are  themselves  due 
solely  to  bad  heredity,  poverty  of  biological  endow¬ 
ment,  feeble  self-control,  neurotic,  ill-balanced 
make-up.  All  these  render  the  parents  either  unable 
to  make  a  living  or  unable  to  live  together,  or  cause 
them  to  get  drunk  or  run  away  or  murder  each  oth¬ 
er.  High  temper,  uncontrollable  fits  of  anger, 
feebleness  of  will,  inability  to  hold  a  social  ideal 
permanently  in  the  mind,  lack  of  ambition  to  pro¬ 
vide  as  good  homes  as  their  neighbors,  lack  of  men¬ 
tal  “drive” — all  of  those  things  which  often  end  in 
poverty,  crime,  marital  desertion  and  social  inade- 

58 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


quacy — the  biologist  has  demonstrated  are  strongly 
inherited.  High  temper,  for  instance,  he  believes 
from  present  evidence  is  a  pure  “dominant.”  in¬ 
herited  thing,  running  in  families,  like  brown  eyes 
or  like  curly  hair.  He  can  thus  predict  something, 
at  least,  as  to  the  probable  character  of  the  children 
of  such  marriages.  Biologists  wish  merely  to  coop¬ 
erate  with  you  in  bringing  about  those  economic  con¬ 
ditions  and  social  customs  and  ideals  which  will,  to  a 
large  extent,  make  such  unions  of  incompetency  im¬ 
possible,  and  thus  this  kind  of  children  will  largely 
disappear  from  the  world. 

In  your  combined  goodness  of  heart  and  ignor¬ 
ance  of  biology,  the  thing  that  deceives  you  is  the 
gratifying  and  often  amazing  results  of  education 
and  good  environment.  Anybody  knows  that  wash¬ 
ing  a  hog  or  a  human  being  improves  the  morals  and 
manners  of  both.  But  your  prime  difficulty  is  that 
you  stop  there.  You  seem  to  believe  that  rescue 
homes  and  orphanages  are  ends  in  themselves.  On 
the  contrary  they  are  merely  stop  gaps  in  the  great 
stream  of  human  misery.  Charity  will  no  more  stop 
that  stream  than  a  dam  half-way  across  will  stop  a 
river.  Even  if  you  build  it  clean  across  it  only  in¬ 
creases  the  river’s  weight  and  power.  If  you  con¬ 
tinue  to  think  you  have  finished  your  task  when 
you  have  found  a  home  for  every  unfortunate  child, 
and  fed  every  beggar  on  the  streets,  the  impulses 
behind  your  method  will  be  nobler  than  those  which 
brought  the  downfall  of  other  civilizations,  the  re¬ 
sult  will  be  the  same. 

But  you  have  thrown  all  your  energy  into  this 

59 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


program,  You  have  gained  the  idea  that  the  meek 
and  lowly  should  inherit  the  earth,  and  have  well- 
nigh  completed  arrangements  for  their  doing  it. 
They  already  absorb  nearly  one-half  of  the  time, 
money  and  energy  of  civilization.  Little  is  left 
for  art,  culture  and  adventure.  You  fail  to  ob¬ 
serve  that  the  meek  and  lowly  you  care  for  are 
mostly  the  grandchildren  of  the  very  same  meek 
and  lowly  which  your  grandfather  took  care  of,  only 
they  are  far  more  numerous,  while  those  who  care 
for  them  are  relatively  less  numerous.  For  instance, 
it  is  reported  that  in  Indiana  nearly  all  the  crime 
committed  by  native  born  citizens  within  the  past 
generation  has  been  committed  by  about  one  hun¬ 
dred  families!  No  doubt  in  every  state  and  nation 
you  are  supporting  asylums,  penitentiaries  and 
reformatories  mainly  to  take  care  of  a  few  blood 
lines.  Why  continue  to  breed  such  people  on 
the  face  of  the  earth  when  entirely  merciful  meth¬ 
ods  are  known  to  science  by  which  it  can  be  pre¬ 
vented? 

“ Unwise  chari ty,”  said  a  very  wise  man, 
“  creates  half  the  misery  of  the  world,  and  charity 
can  never  relieve  one-half  of  the  misery  which  it 
creates.’ ’  Brute  nature  slays  its  thousands,  but  in 
the  end  your  hand-to-mouth  charity  will  slay  its 
tens  of  thousands.  And  unless  your  Golden  Rule 
is  soon  established  upon  a  sound  biological  basis, 
as  some  of  your  more  thoughtful  social  workers  are 
becoming  aware,  you  will  reap  the  whirlwind  of  your 
well-intentioned  but  socially  disastrous  folly. 

60 


THE  FOURTH  WARNING 

That  Medicine,  Hygiene  and  Sanitation  Will 
Weaken  the  Human  Race 

The  fourth  warning  of  biology  to  statesmanship 
is  that  medicine,  hygiene  and  sanitation,  together 
with  your  frantic  efforts  to  call  mental  and  physical 
soundness  out  of  the  vacuum  of  nowhere  are  weak¬ 
ening  and  will  further  weaken  the  human  breed  un¬ 
less  at  the  same  time  we  upbuild  by  selection  the 
boundless  health,  energy  and  sanity  that  are  already 
present  in  the  stream  of  human  protoplasm. 

When  you  play  with  heredity  and  life,  Your  Ex¬ 
cellency,  you  are  precisely  in  the  position  of  a  man 
tossing  lighted  matches  into  gunpowder,  trusting  to 
heaven  that  it  will  not  explode.  Without  realizing 
it,  you  are  to-day  playing  with  life  and  with 
heredity  in  this  careless  manner  upon  a  perfectly 
stupendous  scale.  You  appropriate  vast  sums  of 
money  to  stamp  out  tuberculosis,  to  care  for  the 
cripple  and  deformed.  You  build  great  institutions 
to  screen  insanity  from  public  view  until  their  in¬ 
mates  are  “ cured’ *  and  returned  to  society — and 
to  reproduction .  You  establish  hospitals  in  eveiy 
ward  and  county  to  prolong  the  life  of  the  weak,  the 
rheumatic,  the  diabetic,  and  those  to  whom  nature 
gave  a  shackly  constitution.  You  raise  great  milk 

61 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


funds  first,  for  feeding  babies  born  to  lives  of 
feebleness,  second,  born  from  mothers  too  weak  by 
nature  to  suckle  their  own  offspring,  and  third,  from 
parents  one  or  both  of  whom  are  too  feeble  men¬ 
tally  to  provide  food  for  their  children.  You  fur¬ 
nish  special  hospital  wards  for  bringing  charity 
babes  into  the  world  from  parents  too  incompetent 
to  earn  the  money  to  pay  even  for  their  birth,  let 
alone  their  subsequent  rearing.  The  skill  of  your 
surgeons  is  so  great  that  an  enormous  number  of 
babes  now  come  into  the  world  through  extensive 
surgical  interference,  until  one  of  your  greatest 
authorities  in  this  field  predicts  we  may  soon  have 
a  race  of  women  incapable  of  bearing  children  by 
natural  processes. 

I  think  I  can  do  no  better  than  quote  for  your 
consideration  from  a  recent  Cavendish  lecture  to 
the  British  medical  profession,  by  Prof.  Karl  Pear¬ 
son,  the  English  biological  mathematician.  Speak¬ 
ing  with  great  earnestness,  Professor  Pearson  said : 
“Gentlemen:  .  .  .  You  are  enabling  the  deformed 
to  live,  the  blind  to  see,  the  weakling  to  survive — 
and  it  is  partly  due  to  the  social  provision  made  for 
these  weaklings — the  feeble-minded  woman  goes  to 
the  workhouse  for  her  fourth  or  fifth  illegitimate 
child,  while  the  insane  man,  overcome  by  the  strain 
of  modem  life,  is  fed  up  and  restored  for  a  time  to 
his  family  and  paternity.  In  our  institutions  we 
provide  for  the  deaf-mute,  the  blind,  the  cripple, 
and  render  it  relatively  easy  for  the  degenerate  to 
mate  and  leave  their  like. 

62 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


“In  the  old  days,  without  these  medical  benefits, 
and  without  these  special  provisions,  the  hand  of 
nature  fell  heavily  on  the  unfit.  Such  were  num¬ 
bered  as  they  are  largely  numbered  now,  among  the 
unemployables ;  but  there  were  no  doctors  to  enable 
them  to  limp  through  life ;  no  charities  to  take  their 
offspring  or  provide  for  their  necessities.  A  petty 
theft  meant  the  gallows,  unemployment  meant  star¬ 
vation,  feeble-mindedness  meant  persecution  and 
social  expulsion;  insanity  meant  confinement  with 
no  attempt  at  treatment.  To  the  honor  of  the  medi¬ 
cal  profession,  to  the  credit  of  our  social  instincts 
we  have  largely  stopped  all  this,  but  at  the  same 
time  we  have  to  a  large  extent  suspended  the  auto¬ 
matic  action  whereby  a  race  progressed  physically 
and  mentally.  .  .  .  What  will  happen,  if,  by  in¬ 
creased  medical  skill  and  by  increased  state  support 
and  private  charity,  we  enable  the  weaklings  to  sur¬ 
vive  and  propagate  their  kind  ?  Why,  undoubtedly, 
we  shall  have  a  weaker  race.  ’  ’ 

It  is  a  disconcerting  reflection,  yet  we  must 
face  the  fact,  you,  above  all  others,  must  face  it, 
that  the  highest  triumphs  of  science  are  mainly 
enlisted  on  the  side  of  race  deterioration.  And 
the  whole  sentiment  of  the  people  goes  with  it 
because  they  can  not  see  beyond  their  present  sym¬ 
pathy  or  to-mori'ow’s  bread  and  butter.  On  the  one 
hand  you  have  used  the  blessings  of  science  to  cre¬ 
ate  strange  and  monstrous  engines  of  war  which 
murder  whole  populations.  And  they  are  growing 
stranger  and  more  monstrous  every  day.  While  on 

63 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  other  hand,  the  richest  genius  of  the  race  and 
the  tenderest  emotions  of  the  heart  carry  the  starv¬ 
ing,  the  feeble  and  incompetent  through  to  the  hour 
when  they  can  find  no  adventure  except  reproduc¬ 
ing  their  kind. 

You  even  pass  great  legislative  decrees — not 
laws,  for  laws,  as  Faguet,  the  French  philosopher, 
has  shown,  are  due  solely  to  the  slow  growth  of  hu¬ 
man  custom  buttressed  by  the  sanctions  of  human 
nature — decrees  by  which  you  do  to  some  extent 
make  men  legally  good.  You  think  that  you  have 
thereby  automatically  made  them  morally  good. 
You  seem  to  imagine  that  a  more  numerous  and 
more  highly  trained  squad  of  police  could  guide  men 
into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Men  must  learn  that 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  not  at  the  State  Capital 
but  within  themselves.  Everywhere  we  turn  we  see 
that  science  has  created  a  world  where  wishes  are 
horses  and  beggars  do  ride,  but  it  tends  to  create  a 
race  which  can  only  survive  in  a  moral  and  physical 
nursery. 

Dr.  Raymond  Pearl,  Director  of  the  Department 
of  Vital  Statistics  and  Biometrics  of  The  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  and  our  highest  American 
authority,  has  recently  uttered  to  the  public  and  to 
the  medical  profession  warnings  in  full  sympathy 
with  those  just  quoted  from  Professor  Pearson. 
We  are  appropriating  large  sums  of  money  to  re¬ 
duce  the  infant  death  rate,  to  prolong  life  without 
reference  to  its  natural  vigor,  which  is  the  only  sort 
of  vigor  that  can  be  transmitted  to  the  descendants ; 

64 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

we  are  enlisting  money  and  effort  on  a  tremendous 
scale  under  the  plea  that  we  are  ridding  the  race  of 
tuberculosis.  But  as  Doctor  Pearl  urges,  the  time 
has  come  when  mathematical  biology  must  render 
an  accounting  of  the  real  results  of  money  and  effort. 

The  accounting  is  not  comforting.  Professor 
Pearson,  by  the  most  elaborate  mathematical  meth¬ 
ods,  in  which  many  of  your  medical  profession 
and  tuberculosis  cure  promoters  are  woefully  defi¬ 
cient,  has  shown  that  the  death  rate  from  tubercu¬ 
losis  was  falling  faster  before  you  began  these  great 
campaigns  than  it  has  been  since .  In  1911  he  pre¬ 
dicted  that  tuberculosis,  in  spite  of  all  your  so-called 
preventive  measures,  would  very  soon  show  a  rise. 
By  1918  he  was  able  to  show  that  in  England  this 
rise  had  taken  place.  He  was  not  able  to  separate 
the  factor  of  the  war  from  the  result  and,  therefore, 
determine  just  what  part  it  may  have  played  in  this 
increase.  But  the  rise  had  manifested  itself,  and 
there  is  every  reason  for  believing  that  without  the 
war  some  increase  would  have  been  shown.  The 
large  scale  investigations  now  going  on  by  Doctor 
Pearl  and  his  staff  at  The  Johns  Hopkins  Univer¬ 
sity  upon  all  the  factors  concerned  in  the  causation 
of  tuberculosis,  have  not  yet  reached  definite  con¬ 
clusions,  but  it  seems,  so  far,  that  all  Doctor  Pearl’s 
published  evidence  and  his  personal  opinions  based 
on  his  evidence,  tend  toward  an  agreement  with  the 
conclusions  of  Professor  Pearson.  There  can  be 
little  doubt  in  the  mind  of  a  biologist  that  you  are 
so  far,  by  all  your  vast  health  campaigns  in  this 

65 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


"direction,  merely  setting  the  stage  for  a  rapid  in¬ 
crease  in  tuberculosis  all  over  the  world. 

Fresh  air,  outdoor  living  and  a  climate  free  from 
the  tuberculosis  microbe,  will  not  have  the  slightest 
influence  in  making  the  race  immune.  Indeed,  these 
may  make  it  more  susceptible  to  the  tubercular  infec¬ 
tion.  This  is  abundantly  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
American  Indian  had  never  known  tuberculosis  un¬ 
til  he  came  into  contact  "with  the  white  man  who  car¬ 
ried  the  disease.  Yet,  immediately  the  Indians  went 
down  with  tuberculosis  like  a  squadron  in  the  open 
before  a  machine-gun.  They  likewise  went  down  in 
the  same  way  with  smallpox,  venereal  disease, 
measles,  malaria,  and  all  those  microbic  infections, 
which  the  English  student,  Carr-Saunders,  and 
others  have  shown  are  largely  the  product  of  so- 
called  civilization.  The  Tasmanians,  one  of  the  fin¬ 
est  of  all  races  physically,  melted  like  a  glacier  under 
a  tropic  sun  before  the  onslaught  of  measles  given 
to  them  along  with  your  Golden  Rule.  The  last  man 
of  this  noble  race  perished  scarcely  half  a  dozen 
years  ago.  Is  it  not  possible  that  such  a  disgraceful 
denouement  awaits  our  race  if  we  neglect  to  listen  to 
the  voice  of  the  biologist  before  it  is  too  late? 

The  same  sad  and  astonishing  spectacle  greets 
us  with  reference  to  your  noble  efforts  to  reduce 
the  death  rate  among  infants.  You  have  done  this 
with  a  result  positively  thrilling  in  its  extent  and 
grandeur.  But  we  meet  the  astounding  fact  that  by 
saving  millions  of  infants  who  are  inherently  too 
weak  to  survive  the  further  strains  of  life,  we  have 

66 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


< directly  increased  enormously  the  death  rate  among 
the  older  children.  This  has  probably  also  contri¬ 
buted  to  the  increased  death  rate  now  beginning  to 
show  up  among  people  past  fifty.  Professor  Ploetz 
has  proved  that  every  reduction  in  the  infant  death 
rate  has  caused  a  rise  in  the  death  rate  of  children 
from  two  to  ten  in  Germany.  Professor  Pearson  and 
Mr.  E.  C.  Snow  proved  it  for  England  and  all  evi¬ 
dence  indicates  that  the  same  is  true  in  the  United 
States. 

Indeed,  everywhere  we  turn,  we  face  the  startling 
truth  that  you  can  not  defeat  nature  merely  by  put¬ 
ting  her  again  in  swaddling  clothes.  To  put  it 
plainly,  you  can  not  tame  microbes  by  simply  putting 
salt  on  their  tails.  So  far  this  is  practically  all  you 
have  even  tried  to  do.  May  I  ask  who  uses  your  hy¬ 
giene?  Who  frequents  your  doctors’  offices?  Who 
fills  your  hospitals?  Who  swallows  your  medi¬ 
cines?  The  strong  or  the  weak?  Your  wise  men  are 
searching  for  a  cure  for  tuberculosis,  insanity, 
pneumonia,  flabby  hearts,  brittle  arteries,  hob-nail 
livers  and  abridged  kidneys — some  panacea  which 
will  conceal  instead  of  cure  the  weak  spot  in  the 
human  armor.  Heaven  bless  them  in  their  efforts. 

Should  they  find  such  a  panacea — and  they  may 
— every  biologist  would  apply  it  without  a  mo¬ 
ment  ’s  hesitation.  But  if  you  apply  that  panacea  and 
do  nothing  else  you  will  again  wreck  the  very  race 
you  have  saved.  A  race  that  would  save  its  life  must 
lose  it — must  lose,  I  mean,  its  unfit,  instead  of  cod¬ 
dling  them  as  you  do  for  reproduction.  If  a  race 

67 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


goes  down-hill  long  enough,  it  will  find  itself  at  the 
top.  That  is  to  say,  the  surviving  strong  will  be  the 
biological  “darlings  of  destiny.’ ’ 

Vice  and  disease  purify  a  race.  Wickedness, 
folly,  sin  are  all  nature’s  methods  of  racial  purga¬ 
tion.  The  old  Hebrew  statesmen  saw  this  principle 
of  nature  as  clear  as  day.  They  constantly  said  in 
substance:  “The  children  of  the  wicked  are  cut 
off,”  “The  fool  shall  perish  by  his  own  folly,” 
“The  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard,”  “The 
wages  of  sin  is  death,”  “Every  living  thing  shall 
reproduce  according  to  its  own  kind — the  weak  shall 
beget  the  weak  and  the  strong  the  strong.”  Said 
the  Master,  “Men  do  not  gather  grapes  from  thorns 
nor  figs  from  thistles.”  You  think  you  can.  You 
think  from  the  thorns  of  disease  you  can,  by  warm 
beds  and  soothing  concoctions,  wheedle  nature  into 
giving  you  the  grapes  of  strength.  By  fertilizing 
your  thistles  you  think  you  can  coax  them  into  bear¬ 
ing  figs.  The  old  Spartans  threw  their  weaklings 
and  feeblings  over  the  precipice.  But  vice  throws 
a  man  over  its  own  precipice.  Vice  purifies  a  race, 
because  it  kills  the  vicious.  It  thus  leaves  the 
strong,  the  robust,  and  the  virtuous  to  hand  the 
torch  of  heredity  on  to  the  men  unborn.  And  the 
same  is  true  either  of  microbial  or  structural  dis¬ 
ease  of  man’s  body  or  mind.  The  old  prophets  saw 
this  as  clear  as  day,  only  they  did  not  call  it  what  we 
call  it  now,  the  theory  of  evolution.  Your  inten¬ 
tions  are  good,  but  in  the  end,  nature,  herself,  will 
damn  your  judgment. 


68 


THE  FIFTH  WARNING 


That  Morals,  Education,  Art  and  Religion  Will 
Not  Improve  the  Human  Race 

The  fifth  and  last  of  the  great  fundamental 
warnings  of  biology  to  statesmanship  is  that  mor¬ 
als,  education,  art  and  religion  will  not  directly 
improve  the  inborn,  righteousness,  educability,  artis¬ 
tic  and  religious  capacities  or  tendencies  of  the  hu¬ 
man  breed. 

This  may  be  a  dark  saying  to  you.  It  is  cer¬ 
tainly  one  to  which  you  are  personally  opposed. 
Man  has  always  cherished  the  egotistical  assump¬ 
tion  that  he  was  not  only  lord  of  creation  but  out¬ 
side  of  it;  that  God  or  nature  had  bestowed  upon 
him  an  eternal  reprieve  from  the  laws  that  govern 
other  living  things.  In  his  egotism  he  has  imag¬ 
ined  that  while  other  animals  may  have  had  to  run 
the  gauntlet  of  evolution,  he  was  designed  for  an 
eternal  biological  joy-ride.  In  order  to  satisfy  this 
.comforting  theory  of  his  self-importance  he  has 
supposed  that  at  some  immortal  moment  in  the  past 
God  11  implanted  a  spirit,’ ’  a  special  intelligence  in 
his  cranium  much  as  a  farmer  implants  beans  in  a 
specially  prepared  hill.  Unluckily,  this  theory  holds 
some  inherent  contradictions. 

For,  after  man  had  had  this  spirit  breathed  into 

69 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

his  nostrils,  we  are  informed  that  he  was  told  with 
equally  divine  authentication  that  every  animal,  in¬ 
cluding  him,  would  inevitably  beget,  each  after  its 
own  kind.  It  seems,  upon  this  basis,  that  every 
descendant  of  the  original  man  would  have  had  as 
much  of  this  spirit  as  his  first  forebear.  It  is  as 
difficult  as  evolution  itself  to  explain  how  this 
original  endowment  got  split  up  into  such  diverse 
proportions  among  the  children  and  grandchildren 
of  the  primeval  pair.  Some  direct  descendants  have 
received  so  little  of  this  original  intelligence  that 
they  can  scarcely  run  a  go-cart,  while  others  with 
greater  ease  and  less  effort  can  run  an  empire.  This 
would  have  been  obviously  impossible  had  man  be¬ 
gotten  exactly  after  his  own  kind.  You  and  I  would 
have  had  as  much  intelligence,  personality  and  wis¬ 
dom  as  Adam — no  more  and  no  less.  Either  some¬ 
thing  has  gone  wrong  with  the  reproductive  pro¬ 
cesses  of  the  human  race  since  the  interesting  day 
when  Adam  suddenly  appeared,  or  else  Adam  did 
not  appear  quite  so  suddenly  as  is  postulated,  and 
when  he  lid  appear  he  was  a  hybrid. 

By  the  word  hybrid  I  mean  that  he  had  in  him 
various  sorts  of  qualities  or  characters,  in  varying 
degrees  got  from  diverse  ancestors  and  he  has,  by 
the  simple  laws  of  heredity  now  well  understood, 
transmitted  them  in  varying  degrees  to  varying 
descendants.  This  is  one  line  of  evidence  which 
leads  the  biologist  to  believe  that  man  is  a  product 
of  a  world  of  evolution,  and  thus  a  protoplasmic 
brother  to  all  living  things.  Variation  and  natural 

70 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


selection  are  only  two  elements  in  evolution,  but  no 
biologist  doubts  that  they  have  been  extremely  ef¬ 
fective  ones,  in  bringing  about  the  infinitely  diverse 
forms  of  life  which  fill  the  world  with  beauty  and 
wonder. 

It  is  this  fact  of  the  diversity  among  living  things 
upon  which  every  man  who  has  studied  evolution 
since  Moses,  has  bent  his  mind.  Moses,  Your  Ex¬ 
cellency,  was  one  of  the  most  ardent  evolutionists 
that  ever  lived.  He  came  pretty  nearly  explaining 
it,  although  many  of  his  modern  votaries,  versed 
neither  in  Biblical  lore  nor  anything  that  has  hap¬ 
pened  in  science,  are  not  aware  of  this.  As  they 
have  not  yet  even  caught  up  with  Moses,  it  is  hardly 
worth  while  to  pause  here  to  explain  the  numerous 
scientific  occurrences  that  have  taken  place  since 
the  time  when  Moses  stated  positively  that  the  liv¬ 
ing  world  had  come  about  by  some  kind  of  develop¬ 
ment.  For  the  past  century,  many  great  minds  have 
been  busily  at  work  seeking  not  to  disprove  but  to 
prove  the  developmental  process  of  creation  which 
Moses  clearly  noted.  He  saw  as  clear  as  any  biolo¬ 
gist  to-day  that  the  waters  above  and  under  the 
earth  and  the  various  sorts  of  plants  and  animals 
did  not  all  happen  on  the  same  day.  And  the  moment 
you  have  firmly  grasped  that  conception  you  are  an 
evolutionist.  The  balance  of  the  mental  adventure 
is  simply  to  find  out  in  more  details  what  the  pro¬ 
cesses  are  by  which  evolution  has  proceeded,  and 
thus  make  the  original  grand  conception  which 
Moses  gave  us  more  fruitful,  more  understandable 
and  richer  in  detail. 


71 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

Since,  then,  we  find  ourselves  in  full  agreement 
with  so  eminent  a  biologist  as  Moses,  we  can  pro¬ 
ceed  to  examine  in  more  detail  one  phase  of  the 
great  fact  of  evolution  which  he  set  forth.  That  is, 
how  does  evolution  work.  Until  yesterday  scientists 
believed,  for  instance,  that  the  giraffe  got  his  long 
neck  by  stretching  up  after  leaves  in  the  tops  of 
the  trees,  and  that  the  nightingale  got  her  song  by 
trying  to  sing.  Charles  Darwin,  however,  felt  this 
was  an  inadequate  explanation.  He  suggested  that 
when  giraffes  got  so  numerous  that  all  the  forage 
on  the  lower  branches  was  eaten  up,  those  few 
which  had  fortunately  been  born  with  slightly  long¬ 
er  necks  than  their  fellows — that  is,  had  varied  in 
the  direction  of  longer  necks — could  forage  from 
the  higher  branches.  He  argued  that  these  survived 
while  their  shorter  necked  comrades  were  com¬ 
pelled  to  perish.  The  nightingale,  he  believed,  be¬ 
came  a  songster  because  some  nightingales  were 
naturally  better  singers  than  others,  and  that  their 
capacity  to  sing  either  attracted  better  mates,  or 
enabled  them  to  gain  more  food,  or  in  some  way 
contributed  to  their  success  in  the  struggle  for  ex¬ 
istence. 

This  suggestion  appeared  to  be  so  full  of  com¬ 
mon  sense,  so  completely  in  accord  with  the  expe¬ 
rience  of  every  farmer  since  Cain  and  Abel,  that 
practically  every  scientific  man  has  accepted  it, 
not  as  a  complete  explanation  of  the  infinitely 
complex  problems  of  evolution  but  as  being  very 
helpful  as  a  working  hypothesis.  It  has  proved  ex- 

72 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

traordinarily  fruitful  although  every  biologist  is 
perfectly  willing  to  abandon  it  the  moment  that  he 
can  find  a  more  sensible  one,  or  the  moment  any 
Fundamentalist  disbeliever  in  Moses  can  furnish 
one  which  more  readily  explains  the  fact  of  evolu¬ 
tion  which  Moses  so  clearly  suggested. 

Darwin,  however,  did  not  fully  understand 
heredity.  It  remained  for  August  Weismann,  a 
great  German  biologist,  about  1890,  and  Gregor 
Mendel,  a  devout  Catholic  monk,  whose  work  be¬ 
came  known  about  1900,  to  open  the  way  to  an 
understanding  of  this  mystery.  Particularly  Weis¬ 
mann  discovered  that  when  an  egg  is  fertilized  and 
begins  to  grow  into  a  bean  stalk  or  a  genius  that  a 
wonderful  and  dramatic  thing  happens  at  the  very 
beginning.  That  is,  that,  so  to  speak,  all  of  the  egg 
does  not  grow  into/  the  body  of  the  new  plant  or 
animal,  but  at  this  stage  nature  sets  aside  a  small 
portion  which  never  grows  into  body  cells  but  is  re¬ 
served  solely  to  manufacture,  to  use  a  loose  word, 
future  germ  cells.  Thus  you  will  see  that  this  “ger¬ 
minal  material,”  set  aside,  as  mother  sets  aside  a 
bit  of  yeast  for  her  next  baking,  takes  no  part  in  the 
life  of  the  plant  or  animal,  but  in  due  time  is  passed 
on  so  that  another  animal  or  plant  grows  from  it. 
Again  some  of  the  original  material  is  set  aside 
and  handed  on  to  the  next  generation,  and  so  on 
throughout  the  unbroken  ages. 

A  moment’s  reflection  will  thus  enable  you  to 
see  that  it  is  literally  true  that  “A  boy  is  not  a  chip 
off  the  old  block,  but  a  boy  and  his  father  are  chips 

73 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


off  the  same  block.’  ’  They  are  both  born  from  this 
stream  of  germ  plasm  which  has  been  flowing  toward 
ns,  always  varying,  from  the  beginning  of  life,  and 
will  flow  on  until  it  empties  into  the  sea  of  eternity. 
As  Weismann  said,  “The  body  dies  but  the  germ 
cells  are  immortal.” 

This  conception,  so  simple,  so  all  inclusive,  so 
easily  demonstrable  to  any  Fundamentalist  who 
can  see  through  a  microscope,  throws  out  of  the 
window  about  three-fourths  of  the  sociology  and 
social  theory  of  the  past  three  generations.  It  like¬ 
wise  shatters  the  main  tenets  of  the  political  phi¬ 
losophy  of  the  last  forty  centuries.  In  their  place  it 
puts  a  much  more  hopeful,  more  beautiful,  and  much 
more  manageable  theory  of  life  and  progress. 

When  fully  understood  this  concept  means  that 
neither  animals  nor  men  can  be  directly  improved 
by  better  housing  or  food  or  shelter  or  by  education. 
It  means  they  can  be  improved  only  by  the  same 
method  which  practical  men,  ever  since  Laban  and 
Jacob,  have  used  to  improve  their  flocks  and  corn, 
namely  by  selecting  the  best  specimens — those  which 
had  varied  in  the  direction  of  some  desired  excell¬ 
ence — for  parentage. 

You  have  spent  untold  millions  in  improving 
your  farm  plants  and  animals  by  this  method,  but 
have  cherished  the  egotistic  belief  that  you  knew  a 
better  way  to  improve  men.  Your  plan  is  to  give 
them  more  wealth,  more  medicine,  more  art,  more 
education,  more  moral  suasion  and  more  prayer. 
Unfortunately,  these  things  are  not  transmitted,  at 
least  in  any  appreciable  degree,  to  the  heredity 

74 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

material  which  is  set  aside  for  reproduction.  Con¬ 
sequently  the  children  never  inherit  to  any  marked 
extent,  at  least,  this  improvement.  They  can  read 
about  it  in  books  after  they  are  born,  but  they  are 
not  born  with  it.  They  are  only  born  with  about  the 
same  mental  capacities  and  moral  tendencies  with 
which  their  parents  were  born,  and  not  with  what 
their  parents  may  have  acquired  in  school,  church 
or  college. 

This  brings  us  to  the  conclusion,  perhaps  dis¬ 
concerting  to  you,  that  the  more  you  improve  plants, 
animals  or  men  without  this  selection  of  the  fitter 
for  parentage,  the  more  rapidly  do  they  deteriorate. 
They  do  this  because  your  easy,  improved  environ¬ 
ment  has  enabled  the  weak  to  live  and  hand  on  their 
weakness  and  to  spread  it  among  the  strong.  Yet, 
you  have  risked  man’s  earthly  destiny  on  the  fatuous 
notion  that  the  “grandfather’s  environment  is  the 
grandchild’s  heredity.”  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
grandfather’s  environment  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  grandchild’s  heredity,  except  as  it  enabled  or 
induced  the  grandfather  to  select  a  wise  or  a  foolish 
grandmother.  You  have  staked  everything  upon  the 
beginning  by  educating  his  grandfather.  Fortunately 
it  makes  no  difference  whether  you  educate  the 
grandfather  or  not  so  far  as  the  genius  of  his 
grandson  is  concerned.  You  have  also  believed 
that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  upon  the 
children,  and  that  if  the  fathers  have  eaten  sour 
grapes  it  will  set  the  children’s  teeth  on  edge. 

Now  as  I  have  shown,  in  the  sense  in  which  you 
believe  these  things,  they  are  not  true.  Biology  has 

75 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


consigned  them  to  the  realm  of  myth  and  fancy.  It 
would  only  bewilder  you  for  me  to  say  that,  under 
rare  experimental  conditions,  permanent  and  heri¬ 
table  modifications  of  the  germ  cell  have  possibly 
been  induced.  This  is  open  to  question.  But,  speak¬ 
ing  generally,  the  fathers  can  eat  sour  grapes  for  a 
thousand  years  without  affecting  the  dental  ap¬ 
paratus  of  the  children.  While  the  Hebrew  proph¬ 
ets  were  not  speaking  of  heredity  but  of  criminal 
law,  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  not  visited  to  any  ap¬ 
preciable  extent  upon  the  children  unless  the  fath¬ 
ers  have  committed  the  one  unpardonable  biological 
sin  of  marrying  the  sinful.  But  educating  you  or 
cultivating  your  morals  will  never  directly  cause 
your  children  to  be  born  brighter  or  more  virtuous. 
If  your  father  went  crazy  from  a  hit  on  the  head 
with  a  brickbat,  you  do  not  inherit  his  cracked  brain 
but  only  his  inability  to  dodge  brickbats. 

Stupidity  begets  stupidity,  and  intelligence  be¬ 
gets  brains;  but  a  thousand  years  of  educating  or 
improving  the  parents  will  never  improve  the  chil¬ 
dren.  If  that  is  all  you  do  it  is  highly  probable  you 
will  deteriorate  the  children  into  extinction.  This  is 
because  the  children  are  born  not  from  the  im¬ 
proved  body  cells,  but  from  the  unimproved  germ 
cells.  Children  are  born  not  from  the  body  and 
brain  cells  which  you  can  educate,  but  from  the 
germ  cells,  which  by  any  process  now  known,  you 
can  not  educate.  In  short  statesmanship  should 
quickly  learn  the  lesson  of  biology,  as  stated  by 
Conklin,  that  ‘ 4  Wooden  legs  are  not  inherited,  but 
wooden  heads  are.” 


76 


THE  ETHICAL  TRANSITION 


THE  ETHICAL  TRANSITION 


The  New  Mount  Sinai — the  Laboratory 

Should  Your  Excellency  have  borne  with  me 
thus  far  you  may  have  concluded  that  you  have 
made  a  fearful  mess  of  temporal  things.  This  is 
the  spiritual  reaction  desired.  It  is  the  beginning 
of  wisdom.  When  you  survey  the  wreckage  you 
have  made  of  twenty  or  thirty  civilizations  it  would 
seem  that  nothing  more  could  he  said  to  convince 
you  that  all  past  methods  of  social  organization 
have  somehow  been  wrong.  There  must  have  run 
through  them  all  some  inherently  false  organizing 
principle — some  misconception  of  statecraft,  as 
well  as  right  human  conduct  which  in  the  end  could 
not  help  being  organically  fatal. 

Obviously,  any  standards  of  either  individual  or 
social  conduct  which  bring  organic  disaster  to  the 
group  are  immoral,  sinful,  wicked.  As  Glenn  Frank 
has  pointed  out,  anything  that  hurts  life  is  wrong. 
Anything  which  ministers  to  life  is  right.  You  have 
proceeded  on  the  theory  that  a  thing  was  right  or 
wrong  as  it  pleased  or  offended  God.  Even  if  so 
you  have  had  no  exact  statistical  or  experimental 
methods  of  finding  out  what  pleased  God  or  of¬ 
fended  Him.  As  John  Tyndall  long  ago  suggested, 
men  have  for  ages  been  praying  and  sacrificing  to 
God  without  making  any  statistical  investigation 

79 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

as  to  whether  a  single  prayer  was  ever  answered. 
Without  the  slightest  wish  to  seem  irreverent 
toward  popular  beliefs,  until  science  entered  the 
world  nobody  had  made  a  comparative  study  of 
God’s  ways  to  man  and  the  Devil’s  ways  to  man  so 
one  could  tell  with  any  certainty  which  was  which. 
It  is  obvious  to  any  one  who  will  read  history  with¬ 
out  the  fear  of  falling  out  of  the  universe  if  he 
thinks  freely,  that  men  have  always  been  sadly 
muddled  in  telling  God  and  the  Devil  apart.  Any 
one  familiar  with  the  theory  of  probability  can 
readily  see  that  they  might  as  well  in  most  cases 
have  thrown  dice  to  decide  the  matter.  May  I  re¬ 
peat  what  I  said  in  the  beginning,  that  men  have 
never  been  really  righteous  because  they  did  not 
know  how.  They  could  not  obey  God ’s  will  because 
they  had  no  way  of  finding  out  what  it  was. 

As  the  scientist  views  the  world,  the  only  pos¬ 
sible  way  out  of  this  eternal  triangle  of  God,  Man 
and  the  Devil  is  to  discover  with  the  instruments  of 
science,  new  standards  of  conduct — to  write  a  new 
scripture  based  upon  the  experimental  and  statisti¬ 
cal  use  of  intelligence  which  will  enable  the  hum¬ 
blest  man  instantly  to  tell  God  from  the  Devil,  and 
thus  throw  his  cooperation  on  the  side  of  God.  For 
the  wreckage  of  all  past  human  efforts  to  make  men 
good,  to  build  a  social  home  free  from  war,  vice  and 
sin,  and  lighted  with  righteousness  and  peace,  is 
surely  stem  enough  warning  that  revelation,  proph¬ 
ecy,  intuition,  meditation,  and  prayer  have  all  com¬ 
pletely  failed  in  themselves  to  guide  man  aright. 

80 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


If  there  ever  was  a  direct  revelation  from  God 
to  man  it  is  surely  this.  If  there  ever  was  a  direct 
command  from  God  to  man  it  is  surely  that  he  must 
add  science  to  revelation,  statistics  to  prophecy, 
analytical  investigation  to  divine  guidance,  con¬ 
trolled  experiment  to  prayer.  We  are  still  con¬ 
stantly  told  that  all  the  world  needs  in  the  presence 
of  its  frightful  dilemmas  is  “the  spirit  of  Christ.’ ’ 
I  dissent  in  toto  from  this  view.  The  world  is  filled 
as  never  before  with  the  spirit  of  Christ.  Men  are 
passionately  eager  to  be  good — to  attain  sweetness 
and  peace  and  light.  But  they  simply  do  not  know 
how.  What  men  lack  is  not  the  spirit  of  Christ,  but 
a  technical  method  for  putting  it  into  effect. 

Both  Lloyd  George  and  the  Kaiser  were  con¬ 
vinced  they  had  the  spirit  of  Christ.  They  loved  Him 
passionately.  They  actually  thought  they  were  imi¬ 
tating  Him.  Had  He  been  here  He  might  have 
granted  that  they  both  had  something  of  His  spirit. 
But  He  would  have  seen  that  they  lacked  a  scientific 
technique  for  making  His  spirit  effective.  He  would 
hav$  seen  that  whereas  He  had  Himself  come  to  add 
r  new  dispensation  to  the  old,  that  biology,  psycho¬ 
logy,  chemistry  and  physics  have  come  in  our  day  to 
add  still  another  dispensation  to  His.  In  short  both 
Christ  and  Moses  to-day  would  see  and  would  thun¬ 
der  it  with  supernal  power,  that  men  need  a  new 
Decalogue,  a  new  crystallization  of  all  the  stupen¬ 
dous  ethical  meanings  of  modern  science.  They 
would  be  the  first  to  perceive  that  a  new  Ten  Com¬ 
mandments  must  be  added  to  those  on  the  tables  of 

81 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


stone,  that  a  new  moral  and  spiritual  dispensation 
must  emerge  from  the  modern  Mount  Sinai — the 
laboratory  of  science.  In  the  person  of  some  modest 
student  of  nature  they  would  behold  a  new  prophet 
of  righteousness,  a  new  minister  of  grace,  without 
robe  or  ritual,  whose  mission  is  to  teach  men  both 
what  is  good  and  how  to  get  it,  what  God  wants  men 
to  do  and  how  to  do  it,  what  the  spirit  of  Moses  and 
Christ  really  was  and  how  to  make  this  spirit  the 
organic  principle  in  the  earthly  life  of  man. 

Coming  then  to  grips  with  the  real  situations  of 
a  universe  of  fact  and  not  of  fancy,  we  see  that  the 
whole  ethical  emphasis  of  modern  life  is  rapidly 
shifting  from  the  inner  to  the  outer  world,  from  the 
subjective  determination  of  righteousness  to  the  ob¬ 
jective,  from  introspection  to  experiment.  The  ef¬ 
fects  of  conduct  are  being  referred  back  from  the 
next  world  to  this  one.  To  the  scientific  student  of 
conduct,  as  Huxley  said  of  experimental  science, 
“All  the  authority  in  the  world  is  as  nothing  and 
the  traditions  of  a  thousand  years  sound  like  the 
mere  hearsay  of  yesterday.”  Conscience  has  been 
taken  into  the  laboratory.  Next  to  authority,  it  has 
been  found  to  be  the  worst  guide  to  righteousness 
with  which  superstition  on  the  one  hand  and  ignor¬ 
ance  of  physiological  psychology  on  the  other,  have 
ever  burdened  the  soul  of  man.  It  has  almost  uni¬ 
versally  been  assumed  that  if  a  man  only  acted  con¬ 
scientiously  he  must  be  right.  If  the  practical  conse¬ 
quences  proved  disastrous,  it  was  not  his  fault. 
God  or  nature,  if  interceded  with  with  sufficient 

82 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


vehemence,  would  forgive  or  atone  for  and  presum¬ 
ably  rectify  such  minor  details. 

But  the  categorical  imperative  of  the  super- 
empirical  reason  which  is  simply  metaphysical 
jargon  for  the  still  small  voice  of  conscience,  has  all 
given  way,  in  the  mind  of  the  scientist,  at  least, 
to  critical  analysis  of  practical  consequences.  Con¬ 
science  has  been  found  by  the  psychologist  to  be 
a  general  name  for  all  sorts  of  inner  struggles; 
mental  complexes ;  right  and  wrong  neuron  patterns, 
both  inherited  and  acquired;  defense  mechanisms 
and  wish  fancies,  often  the  result  of  fears,  supersti¬ 
tions  and  mishaps  of  childhood ;  vague  memories  of 
old  wives’  tales;  all  of  which  are  combined  with 
social  pressure,  economic  fortunes  or  misfortunes, 
personal  triumphs,  defeats  and  aspirations  without 
the  slightest  critical  basis  in  the  experimental  intelli¬ 
gence. 

Now  if  the  statesman  is  ever  to  get  anywhere  in 
solving  the  vast  ethical  impasse  of  the  modern 
world,  or  if  the  common  man  is  to  become  a  fluid 
moral  force  in  the  presence  of  his  new  and  perplex¬ 
ing  individual  and  social  dilemmas,  then  all  this 
metaphysico-theological  junk  and  face-saving  fus¬ 
tian  will  have  to  be  thrown  overboard.  The  right¬ 
eous  man  is  simply  the  man  who  acts  intelligently. 
The  best  man  is  the  man  who  submits  his  conduct  to 
the  most  rigid  tests  of  critical  anal}' sis  and  objec¬ 
tive  experiment.  In  fact,  science  and  the  philosophy 
built  upon  science  have  landed  us  not  only  in  an 
open  physical  but  also  an  open  moral  world.  It  is  a 

83 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


world  of  dangerous  but  glorious  moral  liberty  where 
the  sole  test  of  righteousness  is  the  practical  results 
of  action,  and  where  the  categorical  imperative  with 
its  ready-made  a  priori  moral  judgments  has  given 
place  to  the  vastly  sterner  but  more  effective  re¬ 
quirements  of  inductive  logic. 

In  this  view  the  Puritan,  at  least  the  Puritan  of 
popular  parlance,  with  all  his  personal  rectitude,  is 
the  most  immoral  man  in  modern  life.  It  is  perhaps 
true  as  Don  Marquis  observes  that  the  Puritan 
came  to  America  to  worship  God  according  to  his 
own  conscience  and  to  see  that  nobody  else  did  the 
same  thing.  Or  as  that  genuine  social  analyst,  Bill 
Nye  said,  “The  Puritan’s  idea  of  religious  liberty 
was  to  find  some  place  where  he  could  give  his  own 
intolerance  a  little  more  room.”  Morally  he  does 
not  see  beyond  his  nose.  The  conscientious  objector 
and  the  professional  pacifist  are  pleasing  examples. 
They  are  thoroughly  righteous  if  conscience  be  a 
true  guide.  This  sort  of  Puritan  arrives  at  a  solu¬ 
tion  of  difficult  moral  delemmas  by  throwing  him¬ 
self  into  some  sort  of  trance — an  intellectual  cata¬ 
lepsy — in  which,  in  the  midst  of  agonizing  paroxysms 
and  wrestlings  with  the  Devil,  he  is  supposed  to  be 
guided  aright  and  to  see  his  duty  stretching  away  as 
a  sort  of  fourth  dimension  at  right  angles  to  the 
length,  breadth  and  thickness  of  ordinary  waking 
life.  Jacob  seems  to  have  gone  through  one  of  these 
moral  torture  chambers,  through  which,  in  the  name 
of  moral  education  we  still  conduct  most  of  our 
children.  Fortunately,  however,  Jacob  fell  asleep, 

84 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

doubtless  from  sheer  exhaustion.  After  this  psycho¬ 
logical  refreshment  and  elimination  of  fatigue 
toxins,  he  was  able  to  see  his  situation  quite  intelli¬ 
gently  and  come  to  a  sound  decision.  Men  who 
obey  the  stern  dictates  of  conscience  are  still  sup¬ 
posed  to  lead  and  many  of  them  do  lead  just  this 
sort  of  terrifying  struggle  with  the  world,  the 
flesh  and  the  Devil.  They  thus  carry  a  body  of  death 
about  with  them  in  the  happiest  places  to  the  great 
hurt  of  their  nerves,  livers,  hearts  and  kidneys,  and 
to  the  immense  detriment  of  intelligent  righteous¬ 
ness.  When  a  man  has  in  the  spirit  of  science 
and  with  some  of  its  knowledge,  accepted  the 
universe  and  made  friends  with  it  nearly  all  this 
neurotic  fol-de-rol  folds  its  tents  and  disappears. 
The  field  is  thus  left  clear  for  the  intelligence  and 
emotions  to  work  in  harmony  toward  sound  ethical 
adjustments  of  life. 

If  you  imagine,  Sir,  that  I  am  discussing  meta¬ 
physical  abstractions  and  not  practical  matters  of 
hard-headed  statesmanship,  may  I  cite  a  simple  in¬ 
stance  out  of  thousands  that  one  could  easily  bring 
to  bear.  A  few  years  since  the  whole  conscience 
of  England  was  roused  over  the  unrighteous¬ 
ness  of  employing  pregnant  mothers  in  shop  and 
factories.  The  high  death  rate  among  the  babes  of 
employed  mothers  was  truly  appalling.  Nobody 
could  doubt  the  facts.  But  let  us  see  how  the  good 
man,  the  conscientious  man,  reached  a  line  of  action. 
In  the  name  of  righteousness  something  had  to  be 
done.  But  what?  Obviously,  if  conscience  can  be 

85  ' 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


trusted,  the  thing  to  do  was  forbid  employers  to  em¬ 
ploy  expectant  mothers.  Straightway  the  govern¬ 
ment  passed  a  bill  carrying  severe  penalties  for  such 
“misconduct”  on  the  part  of  such  employers.  They 
were  compelled  to  give  such  mothers  a  vacation — of 
course  without  pay.  It  might  have  occurred  to  ordi¬ 
nary  common  sense  that  this  was  the  very  moment 
that  the  mother  had  the  most  need  for  her  wages. 
The  whole  question  was,  however,  readily  solved 
by  the  conscience  of  the  public  and  the  legislators. 
Thus  humanitarianism  and  the  spirit  of  Christ  won 
another  step  forward  in  the  march  of  progress.  The 
legislators  were  duly  applauded  and  went  home  with 
their  consciences  at  ease. 

Vfery  well  for  the  consciences  of  the  legislators, 
but  how  about  the  consequences  to  the  mothers! 
This  great  ethical  question  could  only  be  settled  by 
the  combined  wisdom  of  three  highly  trained,  scien¬ 
tific  men,  namely,  the  economist,  the  physiologist 
and  the  statistician.  What  the  nation  ought  to  do 
could  be  determined  only  by  these  three  men  work¬ 
ing  by  the  exacting  methods  of  the  analytical  sci¬ 
ences. 

Since  the  economist  and  physiologist  were  not 
even  called  in,  Prof.  Karl  Pearson,  the  statistician 
of  the  Galton  Eugenics  Laboratory  of  London,  set 
to  work  to  study  the  mathematics  of  morality  in  this 
special  case.  Instead  of  the  terrifying  results  to 
the  life  and  health  of  the  children  of  employed 
mothers  which  had  so  roused  the  spirit  of  Christ  in 
the  nation,  Professor  Pearson  found  that  the  em- 

86 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

ployment  of  the  mother  has  just  about  the  same 
effect  upon  the  health  and  weight  of  the  babe  at 
birth  as  if  the  child  had  had  one  great-grandparent 
with  rather  poor  health. 

Here  then  was  a  great  moral  movement,  a 
case  where  the  spirit  of  Christ  positively  possessed 
the  nation,  and  where  everybody  wished  earnestly  to 
bring  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  to  the  British  Isles. 
The  agitation  cost  a  great  deal  of  time  and  money. 
Because  it  was  settled,  however,  by  the  cate¬ 
gorical  imperative  of  the  national  conscience  and  by 
the  spirit  of  Christ  without  the  intelligence  He 
would  have  used  had  He  been  there  and  been  famil¬ 
iar  with  statistical  procedure,  the  solution  turned 
out  upon  examination  by  inductive  logic  to  be  worse 
than  wrong. 

But  this  is  not  the  end  of  the  matter.  Let  us  go 
on  with  this  examination  of  the  moral  ministry  of 
statistics.  Professor  Pearson  found  that  women 
who  have  to  work  at  such  times  as  a  general  rule 
have  husbands  that  are  either  weak  and  puny  or 
else  shiftless  and  lazy.  Consequently  the  parents 
should  never  have  been  allowed  to  get  married  and 
the  children  should  never  have  been  born.  The 
children  died  from  weak  heredity. 

What  now  becomes  of  the  notion  that  the  spirit 
of  Christ  is  all  that  is  needed  to  solve  the  world's 
abysmal  moral  dilemmas?  The  spirit  of  Christ  is 
the  beginning  of  all  individual  and  social  wisdom, 
but  it  is  far,  far  from  being  its  end.  When  a  public 
speaker  has  no  clear  view  of  the  solution  of  his  own 

87 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


problem  he  always  winds  up  by  recommending  the 
spirit  of  Christ.  It  never  fails  to  win  salvos  of 
applause.  The  people  walk  out  in  a  rapture  of  exal¬ 
tation,  believing  they  have  actually  got  somebody  out 
of  trouble — the  Armenians,  or  the  citizens  of  Fiume, 
or  some  equally  unhappy  persons.  We  went  to  war 
in  the  spirit  of  Christ.  Most  of  us  felt  that  He  was 
actually  patting  us  on  the  back.  But  when  the 
world’s  premiers  gathered  to  settle  the  dispute  one 
of  them  innocently  inquired,  “  Where  is  Montene¬ 
gro  1 9  9 — one  of  the  principal  bones  of  contention !  The 
spirit  of  Christ  actually  hovered  above  the  peace 
table,  but  lack  of  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  con¬ 
sequences,  a  true  technique,  a  genuine  science  of 
peace,  a  true  science  of  society,  was  the  principal 
bar  to  ethical  settlement.  This  lack  of  a  genuine 
ethtical  technology  meets  us  in  every  schoolroom, 
factory  and  home,  in  every  relationship  of  labor  and 
capital,  of  man  to  man,  and  of  the  state  to  the  in¬ 
dividual. 

The  whole  upshot  is  that  we  are  trying  to  settle 
the  vast  moral  dilemmas  of  a  new  world  with  the 
incomplete  or  else  discredited  methods  of  the  old. 
They  are  discredited  in  psychology,  biology,  philoso¬ 
phy  and  political  science.  Their  appalling  social 
consequences  are  in  many  instances  just  beginning 
to  show  up.  As  a  literal  fact  men  can  not  be  right¬ 
eous  without  statistical  tables  for  calculating  the  re¬ 
sults  of  conduct,  or  without  a  calculus  of  correlations 
for  arriving  at  individual  and  social  standards.  They 
need  all  the  refined  instruments  of  the  biologist, 

88 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


chemist  and  physicist  for  predicting  the  effects  of 
onr  conduct  upon  our  fellow  men.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  new  physics  of  relativity  and  the 
new  quantum  mechanics,  which,  it  appears,  intro¬ 
duces  us  to  still  another  new  world,  may  furnish  us 
profound  lessons  in  ethical  procedure. 

May  I  for  a  moment  set  in  rough  perspective  the 
genesis  of  the  present  moral  situation  of  mankind? 
If  we  throw  it  upon  a  historical  background  we  see 
that  three  great  phases  or  ideas  have  run  through 
all  history,  have  in  a  sense  made  history.  As  a 
result  three  supreme  necessities  confront  the  modern 
man. 

The  first  idea,  never  ending  in  its  fruitfulness, 
was  the  idea  of  one  God.  Up  to  that  time  this  was 
the  highest  poetic  achievement  of  the  human  mind. 
It  began  in  the  twilight  of  the  world  when  our  an¬ 
cestors  began  to  dream  the  great  dream  of  human 
destiny  and  started  upon  their  world-girdling  jour¬ 
ney  into  the  mysterious  West.  It  was  the  struggle 
of  the  human  mind  to  find  a  universe  of  unity 
without  which  would  correspond  to  its  own  sense 
of  unity  within.  Its  lineal  intellectual  descendants 
in  our  day  are  the  uniformity  of  nature,  the  con¬ 
tinuity  of  natural  forces,  the  reign  of  law,  the  one¬ 
ness  of  man  with  that  “high  unknown  purpose  of 
the  world  which  we  call  God.”  It  matters  little 
whether  it  came  as  a  direct  revelation  or  came  other¬ 
wise.  Its  mere  achievement  and  its  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  utilization  are  a  superb  tribute  to  the  essential 
grandeur  of  the  human  spirit. 

89 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


The  second  idea,  like  all  ideas,  was  the  outcome 
of  its  predecessor,  the  extension  of  this  unified  con¬ 
ception  of  God  beyond  the  tribe  that  discovered  it. 
It  probably  took  its  rise  from  the  sheer  necessities 
of  human  intercourse  in  the  schools  of  Alexandria 
When  she  became  the  mistress  of  the  worlds  learn¬ 
ing,  the  Mecca  of  merchant,  prophet  and  scholar 
alike.  This  idea  received  its  final  living  and 
literary  expression  in  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  Ser¬ 
mon  on  the  Mount.  It  was  the  first  conception  of 
human  brotherhood. 

Now  I  think  it  might  not  be  a  difficult  thesis  to 
maintain  that  up  to  the  opening  of  the  modem  peri¬ 
od  nearly  all  the  wars,  social  aspirations,  political 
adjustments,  nearly  all  the  literature  and  art  of  the 
centuries  of  western  civilizations  would  be  found  to 
be  clustered  about  or  related  to  or  in  a  sense 
founded  in  this  age-long  struggle  of  the  human 
spirit  to  realize  and  crystallize  in  life,  art,  society, 
politics,  philosophy,  institutions  and  ideals  these 
two  vast  unifying  conceptions  of  man’s  place  in  the 
universe,  and  what  to  do  with  that  universe. 

Each  of  these  conceptions  developed  a  great 
code  of  morals.  Like  all  great  mental  achievements 
the  second  came  not  to  destroy,  but  to  develop  and 
fulfill  the  old. 

But  life  as  we  know  it,  the  modem  period, 
opened  with  a  new  revelation,  equally  divine,  equal¬ 
ly  inspired — the  revelation  of  natural  law.  And  the 
revelation  of  a  universe  of  law  instead  of  a  universe 
of  chance,  a  God  of  order  who  can  be  trusted  in- 

90 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


stead  of  a  God  of  caprice  who  can  not,  received  its 
final  culmination  in  the  Darwinian  generalization 
of  organic  evolution.  This  doctrine  after  a  much 
shorter  battle  with  entrenched  opinion,  authority, 
prejudice  and  vested  interests  has  at  last  received 
the  universal  assent  of  practically  all  educated  men. 
At  least  I  am  sure  I  shall  have  your  complete  agree¬ 
ment  in  saying  that  the  Darwinian  illumination  of 
the  hitherto  dark  and  impenetrable  mystery  of  liv¬ 
ing  forms  was  by  all  means  the  most  divine  event 
since  the  birth  of  Christ  in  the  intellectual  and  spir¬ 
itual  development  of  man.  And  unless  the  children 
of  darkness  overcome  the  children  of  light,  unless 
the  “monkey  legislatures,”  such  as  that  of  Ken¬ 
tucky,  control  education,  some  considerable  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  scope  and  meaning  of  evolution  will  to¬ 
morrow  form  the  intellectual  stock  in  trade  of  every 
educated  man  and  woman. 

Now  the  human  mind  can  not  go  through  such 
vast  developments  without  enormous  changes  in  its 
sense  of  duty,  its  codes  of  morals.  No  such  im¬ 
mense  additions  can  be  made  to  the  knowledge  men 
have  gained  about  the  world  they  live  in,  what  it  is, 
how  it  operates,  what  reality  is,  what  life,  birth, 
death  and  God  are,  without  this  knowledge  pro¬ 
foundly  affecting  their  whole  idea  as  to  what  right¬ 
eousness  is — their  entire  sense  of  the  right  and 
necessary  relationships  of  men  to  each  other.  In 
other  words  science  means  a  new  moral  code — many 
moral  codes — superimposed  upon,  but  not  abrogat¬ 
ing  the  old.  No  thinking  man  can  doubt  that 

91 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  working  out  of  these  moral  codes,  their  embodi¬ 
ment  in  social  life  and  institutions,  their  crystalliza¬ 
tion  into  laws  and  constitutions,  their  development 
in  personal  character,  customs  and  ideals  will  be 
the  great  work  of  the  present  century.  This  task 
will  have  no  end.  Indeed  the  working  out  of  the 
real  conscience — the  conscience  of  natural  law — the 
individual,  industrial,  social  and  political  decalogues 
of  science  will  be  the  happy  task  of  the  preacher, 
scientist,  economist,  philosopher,  educator  and 
statesman  in  the  long  succeeding  ages.  If  man  fails 
in  this  he  will  prove  that  he  is  scarcely  more  intelli¬ 
gent  than  the  brutes  which  he  has  for  a  time  at  least 
defeated.  Indeed,  biologists,  Your  Excellency,  are 
beginning  to  doubt  whether  man  can  maintain  his 
foothold  upon  this  earth  against  his  supremest 
enemy,  the  insects,  without  an  application  of  science 
to  life  and  conduct  upon  an  unprecedented  scale. 
The  very  insects  may  force  man  to  an  intelligent 
social  and  political  ethics,  or  else,  upon  this  planet 
at  least,  they  may  become  his  successors. 

Now,  as  I  have  said,  these  three  all-embracing, 
all  fruitful  ideas  have  in  modern  times  brought 
three  supreme  necessities. 

The  first  necessity  is  the  outcome  of  the  appli¬ 
cation  of  natural  law  to  industry.  This  has  created 
a  mechanized  civilization,  which  has  woven  a  vast 
fabric  of  relationships,  first,  between  employer 
and  employee,  and  second,  between  producer  and 
consumer,  to  which  Moses  and  the  prophets  were 
strangers  and  to  which  their  moralities  furnish 

92 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

neither  warp  nor  woof.  It  has  brought  about  a  regime 
of  human  contacts  where  many  of  the  old  saints  have 
become  the  new  sinners  and  many  of  the  old  sinners, 
who  were  burned  at  the  stake  by  your  predecessors 
because  of  their  brave  thinking,  have  become  the 
new  saints.  None  of  these  new  relationships  has 
abrogated  the  old  standards  of  personal  rectitude, 
but  they  have  necessitated  new  and  far  wider  ones. 

As  a  consequence  we  have  begun  the  writing  of 
a  new  scripture — the  Decalogue  of  Industry.  When 
completed  it  will  give  us  an  industrial  order  made 
for  men,  instead  of  using  men  to  promote  an  indus¬ 
trial  order;  it  will  restore  esthetics  to  industry  and 
excitement  to  daily  toil;  it  will  apply  science  not 
merely  to  the  making  of  goods,  but  so  that  the  mak¬ 
ing  of  good  goods  will  make  good  men;  in  short  it 
will  transform  industry  from  a  mere  scheme  of  pro¬ 
duction  to  a  scheme  of  life — a  life  of  growing 
values,  running  to  the  brim  with  its  satisfactions  of 
all  the  old  inborn  instincts  and  inner  demands  of 
men. 

The  second  necessity  is  the  outcome  of  the  aspi¬ 
ration  for  democracy — for  the  socialization  of  the 
entities  of  liberty,  the  distribution  of  the  powers, 
authorities  and  adventures  of  government  among 
the  people.  Democracy  is  probably  as  Plato  said 
‘ ‘  the  best  form  of  bad  government.  ’ ’  But,  until  you 
transform  it  into  a  true  aristo-republicanism  it  will 
likely  be  with  men  a  reigning  passion,  simply  be¬ 
cause  with  all  its  ghastly  costs  it  furnishes  more  ad¬ 
venture,  more  interest,  more  hazard,  in  brief  more 

93 


i 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


life  to  more  people,  than  did  your  old  forms  of  autoc¬ 
racy  where  only  a  few  gained  the  opportunity  to 
fulfill  the  inner  demand  for  personal  superiority. 
As  you  and  the  common  man  view  democracy  it 
is  an  exalted  ideal  for  securing  better  government. 
As  the  social  psychologist  views  it,  it  is  chiefly 
the  expression  of  that  inner  urge,  as  old  as  life,  for 
each  individual  to  secure  more  life,  more  excite¬ 
ment,  more  jeopardy  of  his  daily  fortunes  and  more 
opportunity  to  keep  himself  convinced  of  his  per¬ 
sonal  worth.  Without  science  with  its  immense 
communications,  democracy  would  have  been  impos¬ 
sible.  Without  the  progressive  socialization  of  sci¬ 
ence  it  will  prove  but  a  passing  phase,  the  baseless 
fabric  of  an  immense  social  dream.  But  whether 
your  ultimate  human  government  be  mass  democ¬ 
racy  or  aristo-democracy  under  republican  repre¬ 
sentative  forms,  it  will  succeed  only  as  it  socializes 
and  politicalizes  science.  But  whatever  form  gov¬ 
ernment  may  take  this  inner  urge  of  every  man  for 
his  fullest  possible  share  in  the  “  great  treasure  of 
the  one  common  life”  will  in  the  end  give  the  world 
a  new  political  code — a  valid,  flexible,  intelligent, 
always  expanding  Decalogue  of  Democracy. 

But  there  is  a  third  necessity  of  natural  law 
which  seems  strangely  to  have  escaped  your  atten¬ 
tion — the  necessity  which  I  have  already  sought  to 
make  evident — the  necessity  for  a  New  Decalogue 
of  Science  itself.  This  means  the  application  of 
the  scientific  method  and  spirit,  not  merely  to  in¬ 
dustry  and  politics,  but  to  the  whole  individual  and 

94 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


social  life  of  man,  to  the  end  that  he  may  discover 
and  apply  those  ethical  principles  and  that  moral 
technique  which  will  minister  to  his  own  racial  suc¬ 
cess — his  own  progressive  evolution. 

It  is  this  latter  decalogue  to  which  the  following 
pages  are  addressed.  In  order  to  make  this  brief 
summary  more  complete  I  have  borrowed  one  or 
two  of  what  I  conceive  are  bound  to  be  outstanding 
commandments  in  the  decalogues  of  industry  and 
democracy.  For  science  must  usher  in  a  new 
ethics,  a  new  way  in  which  human  beings  will  re¬ 
gard  one  another  and  their  duties  toward  one  an¬ 
other,  a  new  sense  of  what  God  and  life  and  birth 
and  death  really  mean,  to  every  man,  woman  and 
little  child.  Unless  it  does  this,  it  is  all  a  mere  me¬ 
chanical  toy  which  a  few  unique  minds  have  in¬ 
vented  and  given  men  to  play  with  for  a  time  but 
which,  by  and  by,  in  their  feeble  hands  will  explode 
and  bury  them  under  the  ruins  of  the  very  civiliza¬ 
tion  which  this  mechanical  toy  has  enabled  them  to 
build.  If  this  does  come  it  will  be  solely  because 
men  have  seen  science  merely  as  a  means  of  power, 
pleasure  and  profit,  and  have  failed  to  see  its  incal¬ 
culable  possibilities  of  spiritual  and  moral  liberty, 
its  industrial,  educational  and  political  solutions, 
and  its  capacity  to  bring  to  mankind  a  new  social 
salvation.  For  if  science  combined  with  that  spirit 
of  Christ  which  does  run  through  all  religions  and 
all  spiritual  aspiration  can  not  save  the  world  noth¬ 
ing  else  can.  It  must  go  on  in  the  same  old  sickening 
cycles  of  failure,  the  same  grasping  of  life’s  prizes 

95 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


by  a  few,  while  the  masses  of  men  and  women  must 
work  and  weep  without  earthly  meaning  and  without 
hope  that  another  world  may  right  the  wrongs  of 
this,  but  they  will  fail  to  make  this  world  the  friend¬ 
ly  and  decent  place  to  live  in  which  the  scientist 
knows  it  ought  to  be. 


THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS  OF  SCIENCE 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Eugenics 

The  first  commandment  of  science  to  states¬ 
manship  is  the  duty  of  eugenics. 

Three  thousand  years  after  the  Hebrew  states¬ 
men  incorporated  eugenics  into  their  civil  and  can¬ 
non  law;  twenty-four  hundred  years  after  Plato 
gave  the- science  of  eugenics  its  formulation  in  politi¬ 
cal  philosophy;  two  thousand  years  after  Jesus  rein¬ 
forced  its  moral  and  religious  sanctions ;  sixty  years 
after  Darwin  discovered  its  organizing  principle  in 
natural  law;  fifty  years  after  Sir  Francis  Galton 
placed  it  clearly  and  finally  among  the  analytical 
sciences;  thirty  years  after  Weismann  proved  that 
it  was  the  only  secure  hope  of  human  improvement ; 
twenty  years  after  Mendel  gave  it  its  biological  me¬ 
chanics  and  experimental  method,  I  seem  still  to 
hear  you  inquiring  in  vague,  mystified  wonder, 
“What  is  eugenics V9 

After  all,  your  question  is  a  very  just  one,  be¬ 
cause  the  eugenicists  have  probably  been  too  cau¬ 
tious  about  taking  you  into  their  confidence.  Per¬ 
haps  I  can,  therefore,  best  answer  your  question  by 
pointing  out  first  what  eugenics  is  not. 

99 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Eugenics  is: 

Not  free  love. 

Not  sex-hygiene. 

Not  public  health. 

Not  trial  marriage. 

Not  a  vice  crusade. 

Not  prenatal  culture. 

Not  physical  culture. 

Not  enforced  marriage. 

Not  killing  off  the  weaklings. 

Not  a  scheme  for  breeding  super-men. 

Not  a  plan  for  producing  genius  to  order. 

Not  a  plan  for  taking  the  romance  out  of  love. 

Not  a  scheme  “for  breeding  human  beings  like 
animal  s.” 

Not  a  departure  from  the  soundest  ideals  of  sex 
morals,  love,  marriage,  home  and  parenthood. 

Eugenics  is  none  of  these  things.  Nearly  all  of 
these  would  be  anti-eugenical  or  “dysgenic.”  Some 
of  them,  such  as  prenatal  culture  and  physical 
culture,  may  be  pleasant  personal  exercises,  but 
since  they  have  no  appreciable  influence  in  making 
the  next  generation  healthier,  saner  or  more  ener¬ 
getic,  they  do  not  belong  to  eugenics.  Sex-hygiene 
or  sex-education  is  an  excellent  program  for  im¬ 
proving  health  and  morals,  but  since  it,  too,  can  have 
no  inherited  influence  upon  the  offspring  it  belongs 
strictly  in  the  field  of  education. 

Turning  to  the  positive  side,  however,  eugenics 
is  a  method  ordained  of  God  and  seated  in  natural 
law  for  securing  better  parents  for  our  children,  in 

300 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


order  that  they  may  be  born  more  richly  endowed, 
mentally,  morally  and  physically  for  the  human 
struggle.  Modernizing  the  definition  of  its  great 
founder,  Sir  Francis  Galton,  eugenics  is  the  study 
and  guidance  of  all  those  agencies,  that  are  within 
social  control  which  will  improve  or  impair  the  in¬ 
born  qualities  of  future  generations,  mentally,  mor¬ 
ally  and  physically.  These  agencies  can  readily  be 
divided  into  three  categories,  all  interdependent, 
mutually  harmonious  and  supporting.  They  are : 

(1)  Biological,  psychological,  chemical  and 
physical. 

(2)  Economic,  social  and  political. 

(3)  Educational,  moral  and  religious. 

Through  the  control  of  all  these  great  agencies, 

which  if  wrongly  directed  will  impair  man,  and  if 
rightly  directed  will  automatically  improve  him, 
eugenics,  in  the  words  of  the  Department  of  Eu¬ 
genics  of  the  Carnegie  Institution,  is  that  science 
which  4  ‘  Seeks  to  improve  the  natural  physical,  men¬ 
tal  and  temperamental  qualities  of  the  human  fam- 

ilv.  ’  ’ 

•/ 

It  passes  belief  that  you  should  have  man¬ 
aged  the  human  family  for  ten  or  twenty  thousand 
years  without  having  seen  all  this  yourself.  Because 
it  was  only  when  man  left  the  jungle  and  you  took 
charge  of  his  affairs  that  he  began  to  deteriorate, 
and  stood  in  need  of  eugenics.  Had  you  only 
learned  the  lesson  of  the  jungle  at  the  beginning, 
instead  of  having  defied  it  as  you  always  have  done, 
man  would  have  continued  to  progress.  But,  up 
to  the  time  you  took  charge  of  things  and  instituted 

101 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


“civilization”  it  is  highly  probably  that  no  fool  had 
ever  lived  to  be  ten  years  old.  As  F.  C.  S.  Shiller, 
the  British  philosopher,  has  said,  “The  savage 
simply  can  not  afford  to  be  a  fool  or  to  breed  fools ; 
the  fool-killing  agencies  in  his  life  are  much  too  po¬ 
tent.”  Yet  up  until  mental  measurements  were  re¬ 
cently  devised,  you  were  actually  giving  fools  col¬ 
lege  diplomas.  Animal  trainers  inform  me  that 
among  domesticated — that  is  “civilized” — birds 
and  animals  they  find  an  enormous  number  of 
idiots.  No  wild  animal  or  bird  society  could  afford 
idiots.  As  the  direct  result  of  your  management  of 
human  society,  man  has  x^rogressed  organically  very 
little  except  in  stupidity.  The  Cro-Magnon,  and  even 
the  prior  Mousterian  man  probably  had  as  much  or 
more  brains  than  we  have. 

If  you  accept  with  me  the  simple,  common  sense 
explanation  as  to  how  man  was  first  “created,” 
namely  the  theory  of  evolution,  it  is  perfectly  evi¬ 
dent  that  at  one  time  man  had  scarcely  more  brains 
than  his  anthropoid  cousins,  the  apes.  But,  by  kick¬ 
ing,  biting,  fighting,  outmaneuvering  and  outwit¬ 
ting  his  enemies  and  by  the  fact  that  the  ones  who 
had  not  sense  and  strength  enough  to  do  this  were 
killed  off,  man’s  brain  became  enormous  and  he 
waxed  both  in  wisdom  and  agility  if  not  in  size  and 
morals.  Most  of  our  morals  to-day  are  jungle  pro¬ 
ducts.  It  would  be  safer  biologically  if  they  were 
more  so  now.  But  civilization  instituted  a  new 
ethics. 

The  only  reason  why  man’s  deterioration  has 

102 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


not  been  more  marked  is  because  he  started  with 
such  an  enormous  biological  capital.  For  ten  or 
twenty  thousand  years  you  have  been  drawing  on 
that  capital  without  the  slightest  effort  to  increase 
it,  and  have  shaped  practically  every  human  institu¬ 
tion  and  ideal  to  decrease  it.  You  have  tried  to 
bribe  evolution  into  giving  man  a  biological  reprieve. 
Your  marriage  customs,  social  taboos,  family  mores 
and  institutions  such  as  hereditary  rank,  wealth  and 
democracy,  which  confer  power  upon  mediocrity, 
Lilso  your  philanthropic  institutions,  are  all  in  the 
main  devices  for  sheltering  vast  masses  of  ineffi¬ 
ciency.  As  the  philosopher,  Shiller,  further  remarks, 
if  man  is  really  to  progress,  if  these  great  processes 
of  deterioration  are  to  be  stemmed  and  turned  up¬ 
ward  instead  of  being  as  they  are  now  accelerated, 
“ every  institution  and  nearly  every  idea  now  cur¬ 
rent  will  have  to  be  transformed  and  redirected.  ’ 9 
Now  just  what  is  it  that  you  have  done  and  what 
must  you  do!  You  have  substituted  in  the  place  of 
the  jungle  agencies  which  nature  controlled,  those 
agencies  which  you  can  control,  but  which  so  far 
have  been  managed  only  to  your  own  hurt.  Nature 
largely  controlled  the  first  four  agencies  which  I 
have  named,  the  biological,  psychological,  chemical 
and  physical.  Because  you  let  her  alone  she  lifted 
this  tiny,  thin-skinned  creature  from  the  jungle  to 
the  Kingdom  of  Man.  You  then  took  the  other  six 
agencies — the  economic,  social,  political,  educational, 
moral  and  religious — all  largely  of  your  own  manu¬ 
facture,  and  have  reversed  the  whole  process.  By 

103 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


means  of  the  last  six  agencies  of  your  making  you 
have  tried  to  control  the  first  four  agencies  of  na¬ 
ture’s  making.  Under  your  guidance  man  has 
turned  his  face  backward  toward  the  jungle  from 
which  he  so  painfully  emerged. 

Now  the  science  of  eugenics  means  just  this  and 
nothing  else — that  all  these  agencies  be  turned 
about  again  and  civilization  be  made  to  minister  to 
man’s  organic  progress — the  increase  of  his  brain 
power  instead  of  its  decrease,  and  the  improvement 
of  his  body  resistance  instead  of  its  deterioration. 
Eugenics  means  that  nothing  is  true  social  progress 
that  does  not  minister  to  race  progress  and  that 
race  progress  must  be  seized  and  capitalized  at  ev¬ 
ery  point  to  minister  to  social  progress.  In  short, 
upon  a  grand  scale  eugenics  is  simply  evolution 
taken  out  of  the  hands  of  brute  nature  and  managed 
at  least  as  well  as,  and  if  possible  better  than,  nature 
managed  it.  If  you  can  not  do  this,  then  permanent 
civilization  is  utterly  impossible.  If  man  can  not 
live  eugenically  he  can  not  live  at  all,  except  for 
brief  periods,  above  the  state  of  savagery. 

Eugenics  is  thus  not  a  scheme  or  a  program  at 
all.  You  can  not  enact  eugenics  any  more  than  you 
can  enact  the  weather.  Eugenics  means  a  new  reli¬ 
gion,  new  objects  of  religious  endeavor,  a  new  moral 
code,  a  new  kind  of  education  to  our  youth,  a  new 
conception  of  many  of  life’s  meanings,  a  new  con¬ 
ception  of  the  objectives  of  social  and  national  life, 
a  new  social  and  political  Bible,  a  change  in  the  very 
purpose  of  civilization  and  the  fundamental  mores 

104 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


of  man.  It  means  the  improvement  of  man  as  an 
organic  being.  It  means  that  the  enhancement  of 
man’s  inborn  capacities  for  happiness,  health,  san¬ 
ity  and  achievement  shall  become  the  one  living  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  state. 

Eugenics,  is,  I  repeat,  not  a  mere  program — it  is 
a  change  in  the  perspective  of  civilization,  character 
and  life.  It  is  a  new  kind  of  humanism.  While  based 
in  biology  and  psychology,  yet  its  grand  ideal  must 
in  time  enlist  our  writers,  poets,  philosophers,  ar¬ 
tists,  idealists,  and  every  man  of  heart  and  imagina¬ 
tion  who  once  understands  it.  It  seems  passing 
strange  that  such  men,  for  instance,  as  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells,  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  Mr.  G.  Bernard  Shaw, 
and  even  such  evangelists  as  Mr.  Billy  Sunday  and 
Mr.  William  Jennings  Bryan,  have  not  lent  their 
immense  power  to  this  last  great  task  that  lies  be¬ 
fore  idealism.  Mr.  Wells’  imagination  is  one  of  the 
events  of  this  generation,  Mr.  Chesterton’s  penetra¬ 
tion  sometimes  achieves  the  quality  of  prophecy, 
while  Mr.  Shaw’s  croaking  satire  and  immense  dra¬ 
matic  genius  brings  Aristophanes’  Frogs  down  to 
date.  Yet,  with  all  this,  Mr.  Wells  does  not  under¬ 
stand  eugenics,  Mr.  Chesterton  can  not  understand 
eugenics,  and  Mr.  Shaw  does  not  want  to  understand 
eugenics;  while  as  for  Messrs.  Sunday  and  Bryan 
they  have  presented  a  scheme  for  saving  men’s 
souls  in  some  other  world,  instead  of  devoting  some 
time  at  least  to  improving  their  minds  and  bodies 
in  this  one. 

In  all  soberness  Mr.  Wells  ought  to  understand 

105 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

eugenics  since  he  was  trained  in  biology  under  Hux¬ 
ley  ;  but  the  greatest  teachers  fail  with  some  of  their 
pupils.  The  very  romance  of  eugenics  I  should 
think  would  have  intrigued  Mr.  Wells’  powerful 
imagination.  Mr.  Chesterton,  in  one  of  the  worst 
books  I  have  ever  read,  entitled,  Eugenics  and 
Other  Evils ,  goes  to  quite  unnecessary  lengths  to 
set  forth  the  amazing  range  and  variety  of  his  mis¬ 
information  upon  genetical  and  eugenical  problems. 
As  for  Mr.  Shaw,  he  thinks  he  has  in  his  grand 
triple  socio-biological  combination  of  Socialism, 
Lamarckism  and  Creative  Evolution  a  better  scheme 
than  eugenics.  This  would  indeed  present  a  formid¬ 
able  triple  battery  for  human  improvement  were  it 
not  that  the  biological  investigations  of  the  past  one 
hundred  years  have  given  little  encouragement  to 
the  first  two  of  Mr.  Shaw’s  benignant  proposals. 
And  since  the  last  ten  thousand  years  have  made  a 
meager  showing  for  his  third  proposal,  Creative 
Evolution,  it  would  seem  that  to  reform  social  cus¬ 
toms,  taboos,  and  ideals  toward  better  assortative 
mating  would  at  least  not  come  amiss  while  we  are 
waiting  for  this  creational  process  to  show  some 
results.  The  biologist  believes  such  is  our  only  prac¬ 
tical  present  hope,  pending  the  hypothetical  outcome 
of  Lamarckism  and  Creative  Evolution,  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  which,  even  if  effective,  no  man  can  foresee 
or  control.  But  the  effects  of  selective  mating  are 
immediate  and,  when  wrong,  can  be  corrected.  Con¬ 
sequently  biologists  at  present  have  committed 
themselves  mainly  to  forces  they  know  about  instead 
of  trusting  to  those  they  know  not  of. 

106 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


But  the  hope  of  eugenics,  which  is  simply  the 
hope  of  the  race  for  becoming  organically  stronger, 
and  more  capable  mentally  and  physically  of  sus¬ 
taining  the  increasing  weight  of  its  own  affairs,  lies 
first,  in  the  biologist  increasing  our  knowledge,  and 
second,  in  the  biologist  enlisting  the  services  of  our 
writers,  artists,  idealists  and  philosophers,  in  order 
to  educate  the  outlook  and  perspective  of  both  the 

statesman  and  the  man  on  the  street.  If  once  thev 

«/ 

understood  the  biological  foundation  of  and  neces¬ 
sity  for  eugenics,  and  if  its  potent  idealisms  once 
engaged  their  imaginations,  what  power  such  men 
as  Joseph  Conrad,  Mr.  Hardy,  or  Knut  Hamsun 
could  wield  for  lifting  the  human  race  to  a  richer 
inborn  endowment!  Balzac  could  write  out  of  it 
another  Comedie  Humaine. 

Such  men  as  Theodore  Dreiser,  Sherwood  An¬ 
derson,  Joseph  Hergesheimer  and  D.  H.  Lawrence 
with  their  immense  literary  power  are  devoting  their 
energies  mainly  to  unraveling  the  mysteries  of  a  sex 
psychology  which  yet  awaits  experimental  proof 
of  its  existence.  They  proclaim  with  assurance  a 
doubtful  sex  morals  as  the  outcome  of  a  psychology 
which  is  still  a  hypothesis.  If  they  would  only 
go  to  school  to  the  new  biology  they  would  surely 
serve  their  generation  more  and  expand  their 
own  idealisms,  to  take  in  the  wider  sweep  of  the 
new  biological  horizons.  Were  such  a  man  as 
Mr.  H.  L.  Mencken  endowed  with  a  sound  scientific 
education  and  a  great  moral  pur-pose,  and  the  Nia* 
gara  of  his  destructive  wit  and  criticism  turned  into 

107 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


channels  of  sound  social  constructivism,  he  would 
bequeath  new  impulses  that  would  touch  men  to 
more  intense  and  elevated  convictions,  deeper  un¬ 
derstandings  of  how  to  utilize  this  natural  universe 
which  science  has  opened  to  them.  Our  drama 
to-day  has  no  moral  vision  and  little  vitality 
because  it  has  no  sound  education  in  psychology  or 
biology  and  no  background  of  convictions  based  up¬ 
on  that  new  spirit  of  truth  which  science  has  given 
the  world.  Such  a  radiant  spirit  and  genuine 
dramatic  genius,  for  instance,  as  Augustus  Thomas 
gives  us  a  play  such  as  The  Witching  Hour ,  ridicu¬ 
lous  in  its  psychology,  utterly  untrue  in  its  biology, 
false  in  its  anthropology.  And  this  is  but  one  of  the 
thousands  of  examples  which  a  scientific  man  wit¬ 
nesses  on  both  screen  and  stage  with  pain  and  sur¬ 
prise. 

It  is  not  in  the  least  necessary  that  these  men 
write  about  eugenics,  or  biology  or  psychology  or 
any  form  of  race  improvement  in  any  explanatory 
sense.  Art  is  not  explanation  of  either  nature  or 
life.  It  is  interpretation  of  nature  and  life  in  terms 
of  the  idealisms  of  the  human  spirit — its  longings, 
fears,  passions  and  dreams.  But  without  a  sound 
education  in  nature  and  life — what  science  has  dis¬ 
covered  about  them — the  artists,  poets,  writers  of 
our  time  lack  the  dynamics  on  the  one  hand  and  are 
missing  a  wealth  of  material  on  the  other,  for  the 
loftiest  creations  of  the  spirit  ever  offered  to  their 
craft — knowledge,  insights,  beauties,  experiences, 
explored  mysteries  which  Shakespeare,  Dante,  Eu- 

108 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ripides,  Angelo,  Phidias,  and  Raphael  never  knew 
but  longed  to  know.  And  here  science  has  spread 
out  for  them  the  very  things  which  would  have  made 
their  great  predecessors  tingle  with  joy,  the  very 
things  they  longed  to  possess.  Little  or  no  use 
is  being  made  of  them.  The  prime  point  is  that 
these  writers  and  artists  are  responsible  for  giving 
the  world  and  giving  to  you,  Sir,  as  a  statesman  and 
controller  of  human  destiny,  a  sound,  new  social  and 
political  philosophy,  an  individual  and  national  eth¬ 
ics — in  short,  new  objectives,  perspectives  and  mean¬ 
ings  for  which  individuals  and  nations  may  live. 
Some  day  they  will  see  this  opportunity  and  grasp 
it,  and  give  the  world  a  new  wisdom,  a  new  set  of 
standards,  a  new  volume  of  meanings  to  life  and 
character  and  destiny.  For  the  world-wisdom  of  a 
people  comes  not  from  its  scientists  who  discover 
things  but  from  its  poets  and  artists,  who,  from 
these  materials,  create  life.  But  art  and  its  wisdom 
gain  just  in  proportion  as  their  idealisms  are  the 
interpretation  of  a  real  and  not  an  imaginary 
universe. 

These  are  the  things  that  make  up  and  give  a 
background  to  eugenics — this  new  vision  of  a  race 
of  better  men.  This  is  eugenics  and  nothing  short 
of  it  is.  Eugenics  is  simply  the  projection  of  the 
Golden  Rule  down  the  stream  of  protoplasm.  The 
men  of  the  future  will  be  bom  from  that  stream  and 
its  quality  depends  solely  upon  us.  You  and  your 
fellow  statesmen  have  discovered  but  half  of 
Christianity.  The  biologist  has  discovered  the  oth- 

109 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


er  half.  You  have  thought  to  apply  it  only  to  those 
now  living.  The  biologist  would  apply  it  to  his 
biological  brother  yet  unborn. 

That  unborn  man  can  build  his  own  nurture. 
We  only  can  endow  him  with  his  nature.  Jesus 
proposed  that  he — the  unborn- — should  also  have 
life  more  abundantly.  And  the  abundance  or  bar¬ 
renness  of  his  life,  the  biologist  has  found,  is  abso¬ 
lutely  in  our  hands.  Not  environment  but  heredity 
alone  will  insure  to  him  the  life  abundant.  We  can 
do  a  little,  we  can  do  a  great  deal  for  his  environ¬ 
ment,  but  we  can  absolutely  determine  his  heredity. 
We  can  bequeath  him  an  immense  social  heritage, 
but  the  biological  character  we  bequeath  him,  will 
determine  what  he  will  do  with  it.  And  his  biologi¬ 
cal  character — his  heredity — will  determine  four- 
fifths  of  his  health,  sanity  and  happiness. 

Had  Jesus  been  among  us,  he  would  have  been 
president  of  the  First  Eugenics  Congress.  He 
would  have  been  the  first  to  grasp  what  our  writers 
and  poets  and  artists  ought  to-day  to  grasp,  the 
great  idealistic  and  spiritual  significance  of  Dar¬ 
win’s  generalizations,  Weismann’s  microscope, 
Gregor  Mendel’s  peas,  Bateson  and  Castle’s  guinea 
pigs,  Davenport  and  Laughlin’s  human  pedigrees, 
Morgan’s  Drosophila,  Gallon,  Pearson,  Woods  and 
Pearl’s  biometrical  calculations.  These  all  show  us 
the  intensity  of  heredity  in  man.  With  these  in  His 
hands  He  would  have  cried:  “A  new  command¬ 
ment  I  give  unto  you — the  biological  Golden 
Rule,  the  completed  Golden  Rule  of  science.  Do 

110 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


unto  both  the  born  and  the  unborn  as  you  would 
have  both  the  born  and  the  unborn  do  unto  you.9’ 
This  is  the  real  golden  rule.  This  is  the  biologist’s 
conception  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  This,  and 
this  only,  is  the  final  reconciliation  of  science  and 
the  Bible.  Science  came  not  to  destroy  the  great 
ethical  essence  of  the  Bible  but  to  fulfill  it.  It  is 
the  only  thing  that  can  fulfill  it.  And  eugenics, 
which  is  simply  conscious,  intelligent  organic  evolu¬ 
tion,  furnishes  the  final  program  for  the  completed 
Christianization  of  mankind. 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Scientific  Research 

The  second  commandment  is  the  duty  of  scien¬ 
tific  research. 

Science  alone  has  made  true  morality  possible. 
Mastery  of  nature  has  alone  made  possible  a  large 
scale  society.  Morality  began  with  life.  It  arose 
the  moment  there  were  two  alternatives  before  a 
living  organism.  One  alternative  was  “better,” 
the  other  “worse.”  One  ministered  to  life,  the  oth¬ 
er  to  death.  Had  the  first  organism  made  the  worse 
adjustment,  life  would  have  ended  and  nature  would 
have  had  to  try  her  hand  again.  This  was  individ¬ 
ual,  self-preservative  morality. 

But  morality  expanded  enormously  the  moment 
there  were  two  living  creatures  in  the  world.  They 
had  to  adjust  themselves  not  only  to  environment, 
but  to  each  other.  If  one  took  all  the  food,  secured 
the  only  possible  coign  of  vantage  for  self-preser¬ 
vation,  the  other  would  perish.  Life  would  again 
vanish  because  of  its  inability  to  make  the  group 
adjustments  necessary  to  progress.  Morality  al¬ 
ways  means  more  life — better,  higher,  richer  life. 
Thus  group  morality,  social  morality  arose,  always 
forcing  life  upward— upward  toward  more  complex 
structure  and  richer  experience.  But  for  ten  or 

112 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

twenty  thousand  years  you  have  tried  to  gain  richer 
experience  without  improving  the  complexity  of 
your  structure.  You  have  lost  the  cosmic  push  up¬ 
ward.  You  have  thus  lost  half  of  the  organic  mor¬ 
ality  which  nature  taught  you.  You  have  made  of 
yourself  a  ‘ ‘worse’ ’  being  than  nature  made  you. 
In  the  pride  of  your  new  bom  intellect,  which  is  so 
new  you  have  not  yet  learned  how  to  use  it,  you  have 
thought  you  could  defy  nature.  You  have  done  so 
at  nearly  every  point.  You  have  imagined  you 
could  conduct  organic  affairs  better  than  she  could. 
As  a  consequence  you  are  probably  a  degenerated 
organism.  Your  intelligence  probably  is  worse,  and 
your  morals  worse.  The  two  are  well-nigh  inter¬ 
changeable  terms,  since  all  modern  studies  show 
that  the  more  intelligent  men  are  the  more  moral 
they  are.  They  make  better  and  more  complex  ad¬ 
justments  to  environment  and  to  each  other.  But 
you  have  arranged  every  society,  including  your 
present  one,  especially  for  this  extinction  of  your 
most  moral  and  intelligent  men. 

However,  before  it  was  too  late  and  all  intelli¬ 
gence  lost  by  your  neglect  of  organic  morality,  a 
wonderful  thing  happened.  A  few  unique  intelli¬ 
gences  who  by  some  good  fortune,  wholly  uninten¬ 
tional  on  your  part,  escaped  your  destructive 
processes,  discovered  that  nature,  herself,  could  be 
captured,  tamed  and  set  to  work  in  your  behalf.  For 
a  million  years  you  had  been  her  4 ‘darling  of  des¬ 
tiny”  and  she  willingly  became  your  slave,  a  slave, 
however,  which  you  “  conquer  only  by  obeying 

113 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


her.”  In  short,  these  unique  minds  discovered  nat¬ 
ure’s  inner  secrets,  how  she  “  moves  her  wonders 
to  perform.”  And  she  readily  yielded  to  your  in¬ 
experienced  hands  the  key  to  her  storehouse  of  mys¬ 
teries. 

But  to  her  amazement,  you  at  once  used  her 
‘ Daws”  to  commit  further  and  more  ghastly  im¬ 
moralities.  The  first  thing  you  did  when  you  dis¬ 
covered  how  to  harden  metals  was  to  make  a  sword. 
True,  you  used  this  weapon  to  kill  your  weaker  and 
less  intelligent  fellows.  Nature  was  delighted  with 
this.  She  is  careless  of  the  individual,  always  care¬ 
ful  of  the  race.  But  here  an  unforeseen  result  inter¬ 
vened.  With  this  sword  you  gathered  into  larger 
groups  for  the  furtherance  of  your  progress.  But 
the  thing  which  alone  in  your  selfishness  you  had  in 
mind  was  social,  economic,  political  and  cultural 
progress.  Had.  you  thought  as  deeply  and  clearly 
upon  your  organic  progress  you  would  to-day  be 
standing  upon  a  pinnacle  of  unimaginable  excel¬ 
lence,  excellence  of  body,  mind  and  spirit,  and  ex¬ 
cellence  in  social  heritage. 

But,  twenty,  thirty,  a  hundred  times  you  have 
sought  to  build  a  great  social  heritage  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  your  biological  heritage  and  every  time 
nature  has  taken  her  toll.  Every  social  order  you 
have  built  has  been  organically  immoral.  You  have 
purchased  success  for  your  society  at  the  expense  of 
capital  punishment  for  the  race.  You  have  not  only 
stoned  your  prophets  but  sterilized  them.  Your 
success  has  been  merely  an  optical  illusion.  ^Will 

114 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


your  present  society  run  the  same  course!  Eugenics 
has  put  this  same  query  to  all  civilizations,  and  they 
have  answered  only  from  their  tombs. 

Obviously,  then,  science,  a  knowledge  of  how  the 
universe  works,  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  morals.  You 
can  not  be  truly  righteous  until  you  find  out  how. 
Science  alone  can  teach  you  how.  So  far  you  have 
explored  nature,  first,  out  of  sheer  curiosity,  and  sec¬ 
ond,  because  it  gave  you  money,  pleasure  and  pow¬ 
er.  You  must  now  explore  nature  because  it  brings 
you  more  righteousness,  more  capacity  to  make  cor¬ 
rect  adjustments,  first,  to  the  universe,  and  second, 
to  your  fellows. 

Science  is  the  effort  to  find  out  what  to  do  with 
the  universe  and  what  to  do  in  the  universe.  So  far 
you  have  used  your  science  only  to  get  rich;  you 
must  now  use  it  to  become  righteous.  Righteous¬ 
ness,  correct  conduct,  is  the  true  aim  of  evolution. 
The  amoeba  that  made  correct  adjustments,  that 
gave  it  better  structure,  more  chance  of  survival, 
more  abundant  life  was  a  good  amoeba.  The  one  that 
failed  in  this  organic  duty  was  a  bad  amoeba.  One 
developed  evolutionary  morals,  the  other  evolution¬ 
ary  wickedness.  Amoeban  morals  and  human  mor¬ 
als  are  in  the  same  cosmic  category.  “From  the 
muscles  of  an  ox  to  the  morals  of  an  empire”  the 
moral  problem  runs  the  same.  And  from  this  day 
on  when  biology,  psychology,  chemistry  and  physics 
have  all  pointed  out  your  evolutionary  immorality, 
you  must  bend  them  to  your  service  to  develop  a 
true  evolutionary  morality  that  will  minister  direct- 

115 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

ly  to  the  continued  evolution  of  man.  In  short,  your 
morals  so  far  have  stopped  progressive  evolution. 
You  must  now  through  science  set  evolution  going 
forward  again. 

In  achieving  true  evolutionary,  biological  right¬ 
eousness,  the  search  for  the  means  and  laws  of 
nature  for  bringing  it  about  has  scarcely  begun. 
Man  is  millions  of  years  old,  but  science  is  but 
a  babe  in  arms.  We  are  still  in  dense  ignorance 
as  to  the  causes  of  evolution  itself.  We  have,  so  far, 
only  learned  better  how  to  manage  it.  As  Charles 
Darwin  said,  “Our  ignorance  of  the  cause  of  varia¬ 
tions,  is  profound.”  After  sixty  years  of  study  we 
are  compelled  still  to  say  our  ignorance  in  this  di¬ 
rection  is  profound.  We  know  almost  nothing  about 
social  psychology.  The  psychology  of  religion  re¬ 
mains  well-nigh  an  untouched  field.  Political  psy¬ 
chology  is  still  on  the  knees  of  the  gods.  Just  yes¬ 
terday  we  began  to  learn  a  little  about  intellectual 
education,  but  moral  education  is  still  largely  in  the 
realm  of  the  occult.  We  have  made  immense  iso¬ 
lated  discoveries,  but  we  do  not  know  yet  how  to 
synthesize  them  into  that  right  social  conduct  that 
will  minister  to  organic  progress  and  social  prog¬ 
ress  at  the  same  time.  To  synthesize  and  synchron¬ 
ize  the  “ethical  process”  and  the  evolutionary 
process,  which  so  puzzled  Huxley,  is  the  next  great 
social  task  of  man. 

But  all  this  need  not  appal  us,  because  we  have 
learned  two  things,  first  the  aim  to  be  achieved,  and 
second,  how  to  study.  As  a  friend  of  mine  puts  it 

116 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

very  bluntly  but  truthfully,  “We  have  learned  how 
to  put  salt  on  the  tail  of  the  occult  and  see  what  hap¬ 
pens.’  ’  We  have  learned  to  experiment.  We  have 
learned  how  to  compare,  and  we  have  got  over  being 
afraid.  We  are  no  longer  afraid  of  God.  The  sci¬ 
entist  has  accepted  both  Him  and  His  universe  and 
has  quit  trying,  as  the  Fundamentalist  does,  to  put 
Him  outside  of  His  universe  and  build  one  of  his 
own.  True,  we  make  mistakes.  “Science  goes  for¬ 
ward  by  zig  zag.  And  we  never  can  tell  whether  it 
is  a  zig  or  a  zag.”  But  the  thing  is  that  it  always 
goes  forward. 

The  significant  and  beautiful  thing  is  that  we 
Jen o tv  at  last  that  we  are  working  in  utter  har¬ 
mony  with  “that  high,  unknown  purpose  of  the 
world  which  we  call  God.”  Whatever  God  is,  we 
know  He  is  the  imminent  genius  of  things.  That 
man  is  the  most  religious  who  learns  the  most  about 
Him,  who  questions  Him  the  most  wisely  and  fear¬ 
lessly,  who  experiments  both  with  the  universe  and 
with  life  the  most  daringly.  It  is  only  in  the  labora¬ 
tory  of  science  that  knowledge,  morals,  religion,  and 
the  world  wisdom  of  the  poet,  preacher,  sociologist, 
statesman  and  philosopher  all  meet.  It  is  only  here 
that  they  can  all  be  synthesized  into  the  final  great 
ethic  religion  of  man. 

In  this  great  synthesis  you,  the  statesman  who 
controls  life  more  than  any  of  us,  must  play  an 
immense  part.  For  two  thousand  years  you  have 
read  the  injunction,  “Seek  ye  after  God  if  haply  ye 
might  find  Him. 9 1  And  the  scientist  gazing  through 

117 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

his  microscope,  his  telescope,  his  spectroscope  and 
into  his  test  tube  can  say  with  a  faith  born  of  a 
knowledge  which  the  old  prophets  did  not  have,  “I 
have  sought  after  God  and  I  have  begun  to  find 
Him.  ”  The  man  who  has  not  seen  the  scientist  as  he 
calculates  the  speed  of  an  electron  as  being  as  true 
an  apostle  of  righteousness  as  was  Moses,  Jesus,  or 
St.  Paul,  has  missed  the  whole  round  expanse  of  the 
modern  moral  opportunity,  and  all  the  rich  deep 
excellence  of  a  new  and  untried  companionship  with 
God.  Herein  lies  His  own  command  to  scientific 
research,  that  it  is  just  this  eternal  search  for  fresh 
knowledge  which  always  means  fresh  obligations  and 
new  fields  of  duty — the  search  for  new  means  of  con¬ 
quest  over  life  and  circumstance  and  new  controls 
over  destiny — it  is  this  that  gives  lasting  zest  to  the 
moral  effort,  lifts  the  soul  to  new  religious  con¬ 
tacts,  furnishes  the  finest  adventures  of  the  mind, 
and  gives  undying  lilt  and  joy  to  the  moral  struggle. 

For  the  scientist  has  at  last  taught  us  to  experi¬ 
ment  fearlessly,  lovingly,  exaltingly  with  life  and 
with  God.  It  is  only  thus  that  we  can  find  out  what 
life  is  and  what  God  is.  I  have  said  we  do  not  know 
the  cause  of  variations,  we  do  not  know  what  makes 
a  new  spot  on  a  rabbit,  a  new  perfume  in  a  primrose 
or  a  new  trait  in  a  genius.  But  the  moment  science 
began,  the  primrose  ceased  to  be  a  mere  “  primrose 

i 

by  the  river’s  brim,”  and  became  an  object  of  ex¬ 
periment.  And  in  that  same  moment  God  ceased  to 
be  a  mere  4 ‘object  of  worship”  and  became  a  living 
God  worthy  of  study.  He  had  urged  us  by  every 

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THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


inner  call  of  the  mind  to  seek  after  Him,  if  haply 
we  might  find  Him.  But  we  were  afraid  to  experi¬ 
ment  and  merely  worshiped.  You  burned  at  the 
stake  every  brave  mind  that  sought  to  find  Him. 
You  have  now  become  passive  and  in  the  main  leave 
the  free  thinker  alone.  You  must  also  become  active 
and  aid  him.  If  you  do,  some  day,  it  may  be  soon — 
the  scientist  will  find  out  for  you  the  cause  of  varia¬ 
tions,  the  cause  of  evolution.  And  then  we  shall 
know  how  God  created  at  least  the  organic  world. 
Only  then  can  we  become  His  loving  and  obedient 
children  and  know  what  to  do  to  aid  Him  in  creating 
a  still  better  world. 

Science,  then,  I  repeat,  has  alone  made  true 
righteousness  possible.  When  some  unknown  gen¬ 
ius  of  the  past  mixed  nine  parts  of  copper  with  one 
part  of  tin  and  made  bronze,  he  not  only  lifted  all 
mankind  from  the  Stone  to  the  Metal  Age,  but  he 
began  a  new  era  of  morals,  because  he  began  expert 
mentally  to  seek  after  God. 

And  now,  to-day  in  the  electron  of  the  atom  and 
in  the  germ  cell  of  living  protoplasm,  we  have  at  last 
come  upon  God  in  His  own  workshop.  The  mechan¬ 
ist  has  looked  about  this  workshop  and  exclaimed, 
“It  is  all  machinery.”  The  spiritualist  has  said, 
“Behind  it  is  the  breath  of  God.”  One  has  found 
a  universe  that  works,  the  other  a  universe  that  is 
significant.  One  has  found  the  tools ;  the  other,  the 
workman.  But  whether  he  be  mechanist  or  vitalist, 
materialist  or  spiritualist,  both  are  agreed  that  the 
endless  discovery  of  natural  law  is  the  only  way  to 

119 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


cooperate  with  it.  And  cooperation  with  natural 
law — the  will  of  God — is  the  only  righteousness.  It 
is  only  thus  that  man  can  become  a  practical  co¬ 
worker  with  God.  And  for  all  mankind  to  become 
practical  co-workers  with  God  upon  an  individual, 
national  and  world-wide  scale — this  and  this  alone 
is  righteousness.  This  alone  is  organic  morality. 
This  alone  is  progress. 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  the  Socialization  of  Science 

The  third  commandment  is  the  duty  of  the  so¬ 
cialization  of  science. 

If  the  scientist  only  can  cooperate  with  God,  pub¬ 
lic  morality  is  impossible.  Science,  locked  up  in  the 
scientist’s  head,  or  in  his  unknowable  tongue,  can 
no  more  nourish  the  common  man  and  guide  his  con¬ 
duct,  than  can  the  picture  in  the  artist’s  imagina¬ 
tion  touch  the  soul  of  the  common  man  with  beauty, 
until  the  artist  has  transferred  his  picture  to  the 
canvas.  The  scientist  advances  knowledge;  his  in¬ 
terpreter  advances  the  world. 

As  one  writer  has  pointed  out,  the  theory  of  social 
and  political  operation  is  to-day  in  the  hands  of  men 
who  have  knowledge  but  no  power;  the  practise  of 
society  and  politics  is  in  the  hands  of  men  who  have 
power  but  no  knowledge.  It  is  for  you  to  set  up  a 
true  osmosis  between  knowledge  and  power,  be¬ 
tween  social  action  and  scientific  discovery. 

The  question  of  gravest  concern  to  mankind  to¬ 
day  is  whether  you  have  the  intelligence  and  train¬ 
ing  to  do  this.  You  are  the  least  equipped  and  worst 
trained  man  for  your  task  in  the  whole  range  of  life. 
You  would  not  trust  a  plumber  who  was  as  poorly 
trained  for  his  task  as  you  are  for  yours.  The  prim- 

121 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


est  difficulty  is  that  you  are  an  average  man.  You 
can  scarcely  resent  this,  since  it  is  your  chief  source 
of  pride.  The  millions  elect  you  because  you  are 
“one  of  ’em.”  Were  some  starry  stranger  to  visit 
our  planet  and  see  its  air  whirling  in  chaos  and  its 
soil  soaked  with  blood,  in  the  midst  of  a  knowledge 
and  power  over  nature  capable  of  creating  a  civil¬ 
ization  of  richer  spiritual  experience  and  higher 
human  values  than  men  have  ever  known,  he  would 
be,  I  think,  most  impressed  with  the  power  and  im¬ 
portance  of  the  average  men.  It  is  said  that  those 
who  can,  do  and  those  who  can  not,  teach.  But,  in 
this  age  those  who  can  do  supreme  things,  in  the 
main,  do  something  else  besides  politics. 

As  evidence  of  your  equipment  and  training  a 
recent  investigation  shows  that  fifty  per  cent,  of 
those  philosophers,  sociologists,  scientists  and 
statesmen  who  make  up  the  state  legislatures  of 
America  have  never  been  through  high  school,  and 
only  one  out  of  seven  has  been  through  college !  In 
addition  the  psychologists  have  made  the  discon¬ 
certing  discovery  that  the  chief  reason,  with  num¬ 
erous  personal  exceptions,  why  a  man,  during  the 
past  twenty-five  years  in  America,  has  not  gone 
through  high  school  and  college  is  because  he  did 
not  have  sufficient  brains,  energy  and  idealism  to 
do  so.  Our  national  Congress  is  in  little  better  state 
as  far  as  concerns  any  special  training  for  its  vast 
and  complex  functions.  Scarcely  a  member  has 
ever  made  an  original  contribution  to  our  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  perplexing  science  of  government,  and 

122 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

few  have  shown  before  election  any  special  mastery 
of  the  knowledge  already  gained.  Sometimes,  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  political  accident,  we  manage  to 
secure  one  who  learns  something  after  election.  You 
have  elevated  it  into  an  unctuous  virtue  to  fill  your 
appointive  offices  with  “lame  ducks’ ’  which  is 
merely  a  generous  method  of  pensioning  proved  in¬ 
competency  at  public  expense. 

Sometimes  in  sheer  desperation  the  people  try 
revolution.  But  revolution  is  simply  democracy 
turning  over  in  bed.  It  accomplishes  nothing.  It 
merely  runs  one  gang  out  and  puts  another  in.  It  is 
only  a  change  of  masters  and  not  an  improvement 
in  the  master’s  wisdom.  You  gain  office  with  the 
flattering  slogan,  “Let  the  people  rule.”  But  you 
know  perfectly  well  that  the  people  can  not  rule. 
The  whole  problem  is  to  secure  wise  men  to  rule 
them.  You  thus  pursue  your  profession  behind  a 
smoke  screen  of  generalities.  You  have  inherited 
from  your  predecessors  the  discovery  that  people  in 
the  mass  are  impressed  with  two  things :  first,  lofty 
ideals,  and  second,  things  they  can’t  see  through. 

You  supply  them  with  lofty  ideals  galore.  And 
after  any  election  it  quickly  turns  out  that  the  peo¬ 
ple  have  all  the  ideals  and  the  politicians  have  all 
the  offices.  Men  always  do  public  things  in  the 
name  of  lofty  ideals.  They  stone  their  prophets 
and  murder  their  people  in  war  in  the  name  of  jus¬ 
tice,  liberty  and  religion.  They  crush  intelligence 
in  the  name  of  sweetness  and  light.  Long  centuries 
of  practise  in  the  art  have,  therefore,  enabled  you 

123 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


to  clothe  your  profession  about  with  exalted  ideals 
and  glittering  wish-fancies.  Unfortunately  “many 
a  stream  gets  a  reputation  for  being  deep  when  it  is 
only  muddy.”  You  have  a  wide  reputation  for  be¬ 
ing  deep.  You  are  likewise  aware  that  vast  num¬ 
bers  of  people — always  a  majority — will  believe 
anything  so  long  as  it  is  sufficiently  incredible.  You 
supply  them  luxuriously  with  incredibilities.  You 
issue  political  programs  and  social  manifestos, 
which  set  forth  philosophically  complete  and  tran- 
scendentally  irrelevant  solutions  of  our  social  ills, 
sonorous  in  their  sound  and  miraculous  in  their 
illogicality. 

You  are  not  altogether  to  blame  for  all  of  this. 
Your  liberal  predecessors  of  the  eighteenth  and 
early  nineteenth  centuries,  with  a  personal  courage 
and  nobility  of  purpose  not  surpassed  in  history, 
bequeathed  you  a  political  philosophy  which  pic¬ 
tured  society  as  a  vast  evolving  superorganism, 
which  unless  you  woefully  bungled  the  job  of  ad¬ 
ministering  it,  would  enable  you  continually  to  ride 
into  power  on  flowery  beds  of  ease  and  carry  your 
constituents  with  you.  In  such  an  “evolved  social 
order”  there  would  be  plenty  of  wealth,  luxury, 
high  wages,  short  hours,  entertainment  and  amuse¬ 
ment  for  everybody.  In  sentences  of  unconscionable 
length  and  with  a  ponderous  dialectic,  your  liberal 
predecessors  sought  to  give  you  a  fool  proof  chart, 
some  transcendent  “principle”  of  social  evolution, 
some  all-governing  social  entelechy,  which  if  you 
once  grasped  it  would  usher  the  world  into  an  ab¬ 
rupt  millennium. 


124 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Unfortunately,  if  any  such  chart  of  statesman¬ 
ship  exists  you  have  failed  to  utilize  it,  and  science 
has  failed  to  find  it.  The  latter  has  searched  all 
history  and  the  nature  of  man  in  vain  for 
some  such  all-sufficient  principle  of  human  perfect- 
ability  and  social  progress.  All  the  scientist  has 
been  able  to  find  is  a  fact  here  and  a  fact  there 
about  nature  and  human  nature.  By  comparing 
these  facts  one  with  another,  he  has  erected  for  you 
a  world  of  science,  literally  created  for  mankind  a 
new  heaven  of  fact  and  a  new  world  of  natural  law. 
Believing,  all  too  hopefully,  that  you  would  use  the 
same  method  of  thoughtful  study  and  comparison 
in  applying  these  facts  by  which  he  had  discovered 
them,  he  turned  this  new  world  over  to  you  for  man¬ 
agement.  He  placed  in  your  hands  untold  means  of 
human  comfort  and  vast  machines  of  incalculable 
power  which  he  supposed  you  would  use  for  ex¬ 
panding  human  experience  and  ushering  in  a  new 
humanism.  But  to-day  he  stands  aghast,  lest  he  has 
placed  matches  and  gunpowder  in  the  hands  of 
babes. 

You  never  possessed  greater  power,  Your  Ex¬ 
cellency,  and  you  never  stood  in  greater  danger. 
The  scientist  has  no  fear  of  your  good  will ;  he  fears 
only  your  lack  of  his  own  technique.  All  you  have 
discovered  is  that  science  is  a  new  means  of  gaining 
wealth  and  power.  You  have  not  discovered  that 
science  is  a  new  adventure  of  the  mind,  a  new  way 
of  achieving  truth,  a  new  land  of  life,  a  new  journey 
of  the  human  spirit,  a  new  method  of  coming  to  a 
“close-up”  with  the  universe. 

125 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


And  your  superlative  peril  lies  in  the  fact,  ap¬ 
parently  unobserved  by  you,  that  while  science  has 
placed  in  your  hands  this  cosmic  engine  of  natural 
law,  so  filled  with  beauty  and  danger,  yet  not  one 
person  in  a  thousand,  least  of  all  yourself,  has  en¬ 
tered  into  that  spirit,  that  life,  that  attitude  toward 
truth  and  method  of  attaining  truth,  above  all  that 
sense  of  ethical  and  intellectual  values  by  which  it 
was  all  discovered  and  created.  You  seem  not  to 
have  thought  of  standing  humbly  by  the  scientist’s 
side  and  learning  his  intellectual  and  spiritual 
method.  You  have  merely  added  unnumbered  mil¬ 
lions  of  voters  to  your  suffrage.  But  you  have 
failed  to  teach  them  the  new  spirit  by  which  they 
might  put  truth  into  government.  You  have  thus 
only  increased  the  quantity  of  politics  but  added 
nothing  to  its  quality.  You  have  added  no  new  wis¬ 
dom  to  political  life  and  no  new  adventure:  you 
have  heralded  no  new  political  achievement,  stirred 
men  to  no  new  hopes,  opened  no  new  horizons, 
cured  no  ancient  evils.  You  have  mainly  used  the 
immense  spiritual  enterprise  of  science  to  secure 
five-cent  car  fares,  high  wages  and  low  freight 
rates.  You  have  not  ushered  in  a  new  humanism. 

In  many  ways  you  know  how  to  use  the  scien¬ 
tist’s  inventions  for  human  wealth  and  welfare  bet¬ 
ter  than  he  does,  but  you  have  not  learned  how  to 
live  his  life.  You  have  learned  his  discoveries,  but 
not  his  intellectual  method.  This  presents  an  omin¬ 
ous  situation  in  an  hour  of  world-wide  ethical  im¬ 
passe  when,  as  on  Walpurgis  night  “anything  is 

126 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

more  than  likely  to  happen/ ’  Only  genius  can 
create  science,  but  the  humblest  man  can  be  taught  its 
spirit.  He  can  learn  to  face  truth.  In  a  true  sense  he 
can  be  educated.  To  reverence  superiority  and  to  ac¬ 
cept  a  fact  though  it  slay  him  are  the  final  tests  of 
an  educated  man.  A  very  humble  man  can  be  taught 
this.  It  is  a  great  adventure — this  surrender  of  the 
soul  to  reality.  From  that  moment  a  man  is  not 
afraid  of  the  universe.  He  is  not  afraid  of  any¬ 
thing.  Sometimes  this  miracle  happens  to  a  man  at 
the  work-bench  and  often  it  does  not  happen  to  him 
in  the  chair  of  the  university  professor.  But  wher¬ 
ever  it  happens,  there  and  there  only  is  a  humanist 
and  a  liberal.  There  and  there  only  is  the  man  who 
will  help  us  forward  in  this  hour  of  possibility  and 
peril. 

Just  so  long,  however,  as  you  continue  to  govern 
men  and  organize  their  conduct  toward  one  another, 
and  also  teach  them  what  is  socially  and  politically 
right  and  wrong,  by  the  same  old  superstitions, 
faiths,  wish-symbols,  defense  mechanisms  and  all 
the  irrelevant  and  meaningless  paraphernalia  of  so¬ 
cial,  economic  and  political  mysticism  which  so  far 
have  been  substituted  for  intelligence  and  scientific 
management  in  government  and  social  affairs; 
so  long  as  you  fail  to  apply  the  scientist’s  freed  and 
fearless  intelligence  to  your  own  problems,  just  so 
long  mil  you  fail  to  make  politics  the  finest  adven¬ 
ture  that  the  human  mind  can  undertake.  The  no  ¬ 
blest  enterprise  upon  which  any  man  ever  set  out  was 
the  government  of  himself.  The  next  was  the  gov- 

127 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


eminent  of  somebody  else.  And  until  you  have  put 
the  spirit  of  the  scientist  into  both  you  will  fail  to 
guide  those  you  govern  into  a  richer,  freer  universe 
of  fact,  and  bring  happier  issues  into  the  affairs  of 
men. 

Since  you  have  failed  to  do  this — to  socialize 
and  politicalize  science,  is  it  any  wonder  that  we  see 
a  Kentucky  legislature,  with  solemn  social  stupidity 
and  innocent  political  imbecility,  voting  that  the 
most  brilliant  intellectual  generalization  of  the 
nineteenth  century  was  wrong?  And  this  in  the 
name  of  getting  back  to  fundamentals! 

But  at  this  point,  Your  Excellency,  the  scientist 
must  confess  himself  to  be  more  gravely  at  fault 
than  you  are.  While  the  church  and  the  politician 
have  both  fought  the  popularization  of  scientific 
knowledge  because  they  feared  it  would  weaken 
their  control  and  remove  their  emoluments,  yet 
the  scientist  himself  has  assumed  a  lofty  disdain 
of  the  common  man  and  ascribed  his  ignorance  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  poor  learner,  when  the  fact  is 
that  the  scientist  has  often  been  a  poor  teacher. 
Many  scientists  have  confessed  to  me  that  they 
feared  to  write  popular  magazine  articles  or  speak 
on  public  rostrums  so  the  unlearned  man  could 
understand  them  4 ‘for  fear  it  would  lower  their 
standing  among  their  colleagues.  ”  One  of  the 
greatest  of  living  psychologists  said  to  me  recently: 
“I  suppose  I  was  one  of  the  first  among  my  friends 
to  come  out  of  my  shell.  Now  I  find  a  delight  in 
teaching  a  wider  audience  through  the  magazines 

128 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

and  I  find  the  public  eager  for  facts  instead  of  bun¬ 
combe  about  psychology.’ ’  Many  a  scientist  could 
doubtless  duplicate  this  statement  from  his  per¬ 
sonal  experience. 

For  the  benefit  of  the  scientist,  the  statesman 
and  common  man  in  this  respect,  I  can  do  no  better 
than  quote  a  few  statements  by  Dr.  T.  V.  Smith,  of 
the  University  of  Chicago.  The  article  is  entitled 
4 4 Bases  of  Bryanism”  and  is  printed  in  The  Scien¬ 
tific  Monthly  for  May,  1923.  It  is  the  most  search¬ 
ing  study  that  has  been  made  of  Mr.  William  Jen¬ 
nings  Bryan  as  a  psychological  phenomenon. 

Doctor  Smith  finds  that  Bryanism  is  4  4  the  never- 
dying  challenge  to  intelligence;  .  .  .  the  cry  from 
inarticulate  men  that  they  have  not  been  let  in  on 
modern  advances.  .  .  .  The  average  man  must  be 
increasingly  let  in  on  the  processes  that  lead  to  in¬ 
ventions,  on  the  theories  of  life  and  the  hypotheses 
of  progress,  if  the  products  are  not  to  cease.  .  .  . 
The  average  man  expresses  all  he  knows  about  evo¬ 
lution  in  his  retort  that  you  may  claim  the  monkey 
for  an  ancestor  if  you  wish,  but  as  for  him  he  pre¬ 
fers  another  line  of  descent.  And  his  bigoted  ig¬ 
norance  is  due  mainly  to  the  failure  of  the  scientist 
to  take  him  in  a  friendly  way  into  his  secrets. 

4 4 Most  pimfessional  men,”  Doctor  Smith  notes, 
4  4  actually  seem  to  prefer  to  confer  benefits  without 
divulging  knowledge  of  the  means  by  which  they 
come.  .  .  .  Indeed,  many  a  doctor,  instead  of  con¬ 
ceiving  himself  as  an  educator,  apparently  regards 
himself  as  having  the  valuable  key  to  a  kind  of  eso- 

129 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

leric  knowledge.  .  .  .  This  is  more  befitting  the 
magic  of  the  past  of  medicine  than  its  high  mission 
in  a  democracy.  In  the  face  of  snch  neglected  op¬ 
portunities  science  can  not  reply  that  she  is  willing 
to  give  but  that  the  common  man  is  not  ready  to  re¬ 
ceive  enlightenment.  .  .  .  Science  must  take  up  the 
double  burden  of  intelligence,  not  only  to  sow  the 
seed  but  to  prepare  the  ground  as  well ;  not  only  to 
give,  but  to  prepare  the  receiver  for  the  gift.  .  .  . 
We  charge  the  artist  with  the  double  responsibility 
of  creating  both  his  art  and  his  audience.  And  the 
scientist  can  expect  no  easier  berth.  Indeed,  he 
must  perhaps  reconcile  himself  to  a  more  difficult 
mission;  for  in  his  case  there  is  perhaps  a  greater 
readiness  to  accept  the  holy  fires  which  he  steals 
from  the  altars  and  yet  to  anathematize  the  altars 
that  produced  them.  In  so  far  as  this  is  true,  if  true, 
the  scientist  may  compliment  himself  on  having  the 
bigger  job.  But  there  is  no  shirking  it.  The  altar 
belongs  to  its  fires  even  as  the  fires  belong  to  the 
people.  .  .  .  Science  can  not  reach  its  goal  sepa¬ 
rated  from  the  people,  and  yet  science  is  separated 
from  the  people.’ ’ 

Here  is  a  genuine  schism  in  the  life  of  humanity 
to-day,  Doctor  Smith  points  out,  a  4  4  schism  which 
it  is  the  task  of  wise  men  to  heal.”  Man  is  a  dual 
nature — the  heart  and  the  head.  Mr.  Bryan  has 
chosen  the  side  of  the  heart  “  because  somebody  be¬ 
fore  him  had  chosen  the  head,  as  if  the  head  could 
arrive  without  the  heart.”  But  science  has 
failed  primarily  because  it  has  appealed  solely  to 

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THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


man’s  head  and  forgotten  his  heart.  “And  in  so 
far  as  only  one  side  can  be  right,  the  common  man  is 
right,  because  the  emotional  life  of  man  is  pri¬ 
mary.  But  the  error  of  the  common  man  consists 
in  wishing  to  run  amuck,  because  he  is  granted  the 
right  to  run  freely.” 

Since  science  has  furnished  so  many  new  means 
of  satisfying  the  common  man’s  emotional  life, 
he  must  be  prevailed  upon  by  the  scientist  not 
to  destroy  the  science  which  he  so  badly  needs  for 
his  practical  life.  I  might  cite,  as  an  instance,  that 
had  the  recent  proposed  amendment  to  the  Califor¬ 
nia  State  constitution  forbidding  vivisection  been 
carried,  it  would  have  destroyed  practically  every 
biological  laboratory  in  the  state.  And  California 
without  biology  would,  in  a  decade,  cease  to  be  a 
fruit-growing  state  and  become  a  dessert.  As 
Doctor  Smith  urges,  science  must  humble  itself 
and  become  the  instrument  of  humanity’s  desire. 
He  says:  “Since  intelligence  does  exist  as  the  instru¬ 
ment  of  human  need,  intelligence  must  save  itself  by 
losing  its  pride.”  Here  is  a  standing  challenge  to 
science  itself  to  come  to  the  people  with  its  method 
and  wisdom.  For  “if  science  can  not  live  with  the 
average  man  it  can  not  live  without  him.”  Unless 
science  can  become  socialized  and  politicalized  it  can 
not  live  at  all.  In  teaching  the  people,  therefore, 
the  life  of  the  scientist  and  his  profession  are  both 
at  stake. 

But,  Your  Excellency,  the  task  of  carrying  out 
this  commandment  is  too  great  for  you  alone  or  for 

131 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  scientist  alone.  The  writer,  the  orator,  the 
preacher,  the  social  student,  the  educator,  the  poet 
and  dramatist  must  all  alike  shoulder,  with  both  the 
scientist  and  statesman,  this  stupendous  responsi¬ 
bility.  We  already  have  enough  science  right  at 
hand  to  bring  the  world  into  an  earthly  paradise. 
It  remains  only  for  all  men,  through  you,  to  apply 
it.  I  know  of  no  man  who  has  seen  all  its  intellect¬ 
ual  implications,  its  difficulties  and  possibilities  so 
clearly  as  Mr.  Glenn  Frank,  the  publicist,  a  man 
who  is  rising  among  the  younger  men  of  this  gener¬ 
ation  as  the  new  type  of  scientific  statesman,  who 
must  shortly  replace  the  older  type  if  the 
world  is  to  reap  in  social  organization,  in  in¬ 
dustrial  development  and  political  achievement  the 
happy  possibilities  for  the  common  man  which  the 
scientist  has  laid  at  our  feet.  With  such  power 
over  nature  what  could  we  not  do  for  the  common 
man  if  only  our  leadership  itself  could  enter  com¬ 
pletely  into  that  spiritual  surrender  to  truth  and 
that  exacting  intellectual  method  by  which  this 
power  was  by  the  scientist  discovered.  Speaking 
with  a  truly  continental  eloquence,  Mr.  Frank  has 
called  this  next  great  intellectual  step,  “The  Spirit¬ 
ual  Renaissance  of  the  Western  World.’ ’  If  it  truly 
lays  hold  of  the  western  world,  it  will  lay  hold  of 
all  the  world,  for  at  last,  through  science,  “East  is 
West  and  West  is  East,”  in  the  field  of  political 
and  social  reconstruction. 

This  renaissance  will  be,  indeed  already  is,  a 
deep  and  rapidly  awakening  sense  among  thinking 

132 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


men  and  women  that,  out  of  the  despair  and  wreck¬ 
age  of  the  past  decade,  a  new  social  ardor  and  order, 
new  social  and  political  objectives,  in  short  a  new 
humanism  can  be,  indeed  is  already  being,  erected 
upon  the  foundations  which  science  has  placed  with¬ 
in  the  grasp  of  man.  In  a  book,  shortly  to  be  pub¬ 
lished,  one  which  I  call  earnestly  to  your  attention, 
Mr.  Frank  has  outlined  the  bases,  motives  and  ob¬ 
jectives  of  this  rapidly  gathering  movement  toward 
a  new  spiritual  spring-time  in  the  hopes  and  hearts 
of  men.  It  is  already  bending  like  a  new  bow  of 
promise  across  the  sky  of  human  hope. 

This  awakening  all  depends  for  its  universality, 
usefulness  and  permanence,  upon  the  socialization  of 
science.  The  writer,  orator,  educator  and  dramatist 
who  understand  the  scientists’  repellent  language 
must  enter  the  temple  with  the  scientist,  although 
even  they  may  not  go  behind  the  holy  veil.  They 
must  then  come  out  upon  the  temple  steps  and  in 
simple  forms  reveal  these  mysteries  to  the  people. 
And  then  your  immediate  duty  as  social,  business, 
religious,  educational  and  political  statesman  is  to 
organize  these  precepts  from  on  high  into  social 
custom,  legal  statute,  educational  policy,  religious 
worship  and  the  compelling  forms  of  art.  For  if 
the  scientist  gain  the  whole  world  and  can  not  share 
it  with  all  mankind,  civilization  will  again  lose  its 
own  soul.  But  if  a  true  scientific  and  humanistic 
statesmanship  can  bring  all  the  ministries  of  sci¬ 
ence  to  the  common  man,  it  will  endow  him  with 
new  and  unknown  powers  of  personal  character,  po- 

133 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


litical  efficiency  and  social  service.  For  the  social 
organization  of  science  is  simply  the  technical  ad¬ 
ministration  of  the  love  of  God. 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Measuring  Men 

The  fourth  commandment  of  science  is  the  duty 
of  measuring  men. 

Civilization  has  always  failed,  Your  Excellency, 
because  it  has  never  succeeded  in  fitting  each  and 
every  man  to  its  new  forms  of  evolution.  For  evolu¬ 
tion  seems  to  the  human  mind  to-day  to  be  in  the 
main  the  resultant  of  four  great  forces — variation, 
adaptation,  selection  and  heredity.  First,  each  in¬ 
dividual  “varies”  from  its  forebears.  Secondly,  if 
this  variation  be  not  “adapted”  to  the  environment, 
nature  kills  it.  Thirdly,  if  this  variation  be  adapted 
nature  “selects”  this  individual  for  survival.  And, 
fourthly,  the  individual  thus  varied,  adapted,  and 
selected  by  nature,  produces  progeny,  and  by 
“heredity,”  transmits  to  its  offspring  the  organic 
values  which  enabled  it  to  survive. 

This  is  nature’s  method — “natural  selection.” 
It  is  crude,  inefficient,  brutal,  wasteful.  Many  beau¬ 
tiful  and  useful  variations  are  lost  in  the  vast  melee. 
Man  must  improve  upon  nature’s  method  by  pre¬ 
serving  all  variations  of  worth  and  beauty.  He 
must  either  remain  in  savagery  or  else  institute  an 
artificial  selection  as  efficient  as  that  of  nature  and 
much  more  intelligent.  This  is  a  task  of  infinite 

135 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


complexity.  It  is,  indeed,  so  perplexing,  so  filled 
with  unbelievable  hazard,  it  involves  so  many  fac¬ 
tors  that  its  achievement  will  be  the  final  test  of  the 
total  genius  of  man.  But  its  peril  constitutes  its 
challenge,  its  possibility  makes  it  our  duty,  its 
grandeur  is  its  appeal.  To  undertake  it  is  inescap¬ 
able.  Once  the  conception  of  suffering  has  touched 
the  imagination  of  any  organic  being  it  can  not  rest 
until  that  suffering  is  relieved.  Once  the  ideal  of  a 
being  healthy,  sane  and  free  has  entered  the  mind, 
even  as  a  day-dream,  the  spirit  of  man  will  know 
no  ease  until  all  men  are  healthy,  sane  and  free.  And 
now  that  science  has  shown  the  way,  nothing  but  a 
complete  control  over  his  own  evolution  will  ever 
again  satisfy  the  better  angels  of  man’s  nature  that 
have  come  out  of  that  evolution.  Eugenics  at  last 
gives  in  one  single  concept  both  a  solid  reality  and 
a  quickening  idealism  to  all  those  heretofore  empty 
phrases,  “ social  order,”  “social  control”  and 
“civilization.” 

But  unless  you  can  measure  men  you  can  not 
select  them.  If  you  can  not  tell  who  possesses  ex¬ 
cellence,  you  can  not  weave  it  into  the  protoplasmic 
fabric  of  the  race.  It  is  often  said  that  eugenics  is 
hopeless  because  it  does  not  know  what  it  wants  in 
human  nature — it  has  no  ideal.  To  this  Prof.  Mor¬ 
ton  Pease  of  Harvard  aptly  replied:  “Yes  it  has; 
it  wants  such  men  as  William  Graham  Sumner  and 
William  James.”  This  certainly  sets  a  lofty  ideal. 
We  do  want  many,  many  such  men  and  by  eugenics 
can  have  them.  Yet,  in  all  soberness  it  is  doubtful 

136 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


if  we  want  a  whole  race  of  such  men.  Men  like  these 
would  doubtless  clean  our  streets  and  remove  our 
garbage  a  hundred  times  better  than  it  is  now  done, 
but  they  could  not  at  the  same  time  be  teachers, 
writers,  lecturers  and  philosophers,  unless  per¬ 
chance  a  society  of  such  men  would  be  so  perfect 
that  the  street  cleaner  and  philosopher  would  will¬ 
ingly  interchange  their  tasks  from  hour  to  hour  or 
from  day  to  day.  Pending  such  a  possibility,  how¬ 
ever,  eugenics  is  content  with  a  much  less  but  more 
inclusive  ideal,  namely,  the  increase  of  health,  san¬ 
ity  and  energy. 

These  three  “characters”  or  “traits”  as  the  bi¬ 
ologist  terms  them,  are  so  clearly  matters  of  hered¬ 
ity,  they  are  so  definitely  and  surely  passed  en 
masse  from  generation  to  generation,  there  is  such 
a  wealth  of  them  already  resident  in  the  human  pro¬ 
toplasm  that  they  seem  to  be  our  safest  guides.  If 
they  are  once  concentrated  in  a  particular  family  or 
race  they  are  nearly  indestructible.  Above  all,  with 
them  are  knitted  in  the  protoplasmic  skein  so  many 
other  of  the  desirable  characters  of  physical,  mental 
and  temperamental  excellence;  and  finally  their 
possession  in  generous  measure  by  any  one  individ¬ 
ual  removes  at  one  sweep  a  vast  coterie  of  human 
woes  and  insures  an  immense  range  of  virtue,  effec¬ 
tiveness  and  happiness. 

In  order  to  secure  them  not  only  is  it  not  neces¬ 
sary  to  embark  upon  the  fantastic  program  of  the 
farmer  breeding  his  animals  as  such  critics  as  Mr. 
Wells,  Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Shaw  seem  to  as- 

137 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


snme,  for  such  a  grotesque  project  would  wreck  the 
race  that  undertook  it.  The  farmer  selects  only  for 
some  special  excellence.  He  desires  speed  in  his 
horse  but  may  have  to  sacrifice  longevity ;  he  wishes 
to  secure  milk  or  beef  from  his  cattle,  but  may  be 
compelled  to  sacrifice  hardiness.  He  does  not  want 
general  but  specific  excellence.  Moreover  his  ani¬ 
mals  are  not  going  to  build  a  multiform  society. 

But  further,  those  shallow  critics  of  eugenics 
who  compare  it  to  the  barnyard  methods  of  the 
breeder  show  a  complete  ignorance  of  both  genetical 
procedure  on  the  one  hand  and  eugenical  aim  on 
the  other.  The  breeder  works  boldly  because  he 
knows  his  own  fostering  intelligence  will  be  present 
to  provide  the  specialized  environment  for  his  ap¬ 
parently  strengthened  but  often  in  reality  weakened 
animals.  But  there  is  no  such  foster  parent  to  take 
care  of  man.  Once  he  loses  his  own  physique  or 
intelligence  or  emotional  drive  he  is  lost.  This  is, 
indeed,  precisely  what  he  does  do  when  he  leaves 
the  jungle  and  embarks  upon  civilization.  With  the 
courage  of  the  fool,  but  without  the  wit  of  the  angel, 
he  treads  boldly  upon  evolutionary  paths  where  the 
latter  would  tremble.  It  is  commonly  assumed  that 
man  is  a  domestic  animal  with  some  mystical  foster 
parent  such  as  social  evolution  or  humanity  or 
Christianity  or  Democracy  to  suckle  his  weak¬ 
ness  and  coddle  his  foolishness.  But,  as  Prof. 
Edwin  Grant  Conklin,  the  wit  of  the  biological 
world,  has  said:  “Man  is  not  a  domestic  animal  be¬ 
cause  there  is  nobody  to  domesticate  him.”  He 

138 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


must  play  his  own  hand  in  the  game  of  evolution. 
It  is  a  desperate  game.  Nature  plays  fair  but  she 
permits  no  stacked  cards  and  she  mercilessly  takes 
her  winnings. 

But,  as  the  critics  of  eugenics  do  not  see,  man  is 
already  playing  that  game  upon  a  stupendous  scale. 
Twenty,  thirty,  a  hundred  times — in  Babylon, 
Egypt,  Greece,  Borne  and  elsewhere — he  has  pushed 
out  upon  a  bold  play  and  staked  all  the  winnings  of 
his  barbaric  days  upon  one  hazard,  namely  eco¬ 
nomic  and  political  civilization.  Every  time  he 
has  lost.  Critics  of  eugenics  should  see  that  man  is 
already  interfering  with  his  own  breeding  processes 
almost  as  radically  as  does  the  animal  breeder.  Yet 
so  far  he  has  done  it  without  even  breeding  for  spe¬ 
cific  excellence,  let  alone  the  much  more  difficult 
task  of  breeding  for  general  excellence.  And  now 
at  last  he  has  enough  knowledge  to  make  a  begin¬ 
ning  of  a  truly  biological  civilization.  These  un- 
debatable  facts  throw  man  at  last  upon  a  eugenics 
program  whether  he  will  or  no.  He  can  not  do 
worse  than  he  has  done.  He  may  do  vastly  better. 

Now  the  three  ideals  of  health,  sanity  and  en¬ 
ergy  seem  not  only  perfectly  safe  objectives,  but 
also  attainable  ones.  True  we  wish  much  more  in¬ 
ventiveness  than  we  have,  but  in  breeding  for  it,  it 
might  cost  us  courage;  to  breed  poets  is  quite  pos¬ 
sible,  but  it  might  cost  us  the  adventure  and  enter¬ 
prise  that  makes  a  race  worth  writing  about.  But 
with  health,  sanity  and  energy  as  our  racial  foun¬ 
dation,  inventors,  poets  and  dreamers  will  doubtless 

139 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


rise  in  sufficient  abundance  to  give  us  both  practi¬ 
cality  and  humanism.  We  are  often  warned  again 
by  our  critics  that  some  men  of  genius  have  lacked 
both  health  and  sanity.  This  is  a  badly  worn  bio¬ 
logical  joke.  Havelock  Ellis  finds  that  about  five 
or  six  per  cent,  of  men  of  genius  have  lacked  sanity 
and  a  few  more  have  lacked  health.  Granted  it  were 
twenty  per  cent.,  is  it  necessary  to  condemn  a  whole 
race  to  bodily  feebleness  and  mental  unbalance  for 
the  sake  of  securing  one  or  two  geniuses  a  century, 
and  at  the  risk  of  losing  civilization  itself,  when  a 
race  of  healthy,  sane  and  energetic  men  would  prob¬ 
ably  within  the  same  time  produce  a  thousand  gen¬ 
iuses  ?  And  if  they  did  not  produce  a  rich  supply  of 
genius  they  would  at  least  be  men  with  red  blood, 
to  whom  the  game  of  a  flaming  life  and  energetic 
death  would  be  worth  the  candle. 

For  the  first  time  in  the  whole  history  of 
man,  health,  sanity  and  energy  are  now  fairly  meas- 
ureable  human  qualities.  Not  only  can  scientists 
tell  with  great  fidelity  which  individuals  possess 
them,  but  what  is  more  significant  they  can  tell  fairly 
well  how  much  of  them  each  possesses  compared 
with  his  fellows.  I  have  already  argued  the  ques¬ 
tion  as  to  how  accurately  sanity  and  mental  energy 
can  be  measured.  The  fact  that  it  can  be  moder¬ 
ately  well  done,  at  once  confronts  us  with  two  great 
biological  as  well  as  social  necessities:  first,  the 
measurement  of  men  for  industrial  and  economic 
positions,  and  second,  their  measurement  for  social 
and  political  positions. 


140 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Let  us  turn  first  to  vocational  measurement — j 
the  humane  orientation  of  men  in  a  mechanized 
world,  with  an  especial  view  to  its  biological  conse¬ 
quences. 

The  industrial  and  economic  machine  has  become 
so  complicated  that  it  is  beyond  the  intelligence  of 
any  one  man  to  fit  himself  happily  into  it.  This  is  a 
tragic  truth  particularly  to  the  vast  mass  of  labor¬ 
ers,  who  must  carry  this  cosmic  machine  upon  their 
shoulders.  In  the  old  days,  the  most  moderate  in¬ 
telligence  could  easily  find  its  place  in  the  indus¬ 
trial  order.  Indeed,  a  thing  of  immense  biological 
significance  which  has  wholly  escaped  statesman¬ 
ship,  was  that  a  man’s  occupation  usually  descended 
from  father  to  son.  This  in  all  probability  resulted 
in  building  up  specialized  types  of  intelligence  and 
temperament,  peculiarly  adapted  to  carry  on  effi¬ 
ciently  and  happily  all  the  industrial  interests  of 
the  community. 

But  the  industrial  revolution  has  abrogated 
nearly  all  of  this  beneficent  process.  It  has  ruth¬ 
lessly  torn  men  from  their  old  social  and  biological 
anchorages  and  thrown  them  pell-mell  into  enor¬ 
mous  aggregations  where  scarcely  anything  but 
chance  enables  a  man  to  find  his  happiest  or  most 
efficient  place.  His  true  powers  hnd  capacities  may 
remain  utterly  unknown,  to  himself,  his  employer, 
or  society. 

What  is  even  more  significant,  he  is  often  thrown 
by  the  same  pell-mell  process  of  chance  into  propin¬ 
quity  with  some  woman  who  in  all  probability  has 

141 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


not  been  bred  from  the  same  stream.  Thus,  not  by 
choice  but  by  chance,  he  marries  and  transmits  not 
a  genetical  concentration,  but  often  a  complete  gen- 
etical  cancellation  of  his  own  temperament  and  abil¬ 
ities. 

In  this  way  it  is  highly  probable  that  we  have 
already  lost,  at  a  time  when  we  need  them  most, 
much  of  the  highly  inbred,  inborn  talents  which 
both  natural  and  social  selection  had  through  past 
ages  so  laboriously  developed. 

If  your  present  chaos  in  this  respect  continues, 
it  can  mean,  as  the  biologist  sees  it,  but  one  of 
two  things:  first,  that  man  must  go  through  the 
long,  painful  process  of  a  new  evolution  until  prop¬ 
er  talents  and  temperaments  have  survived  and 
been  distributed  among  the  industrial  population; 
or,  second,  before  such  a  brutal  process  can  make 
this  genetical  achievement,  your  immense  industrial 
civilization  will  disintegrate  from  lack  of  the  special 
abilities  and  traits  of  character  needed  at  every 
point  to  man  it.  It  may  be  of  course  that  there  is 
sufficient  general  intelligence  and  good  will  bio¬ 
logically  resident  in  mankind  to  survive  this  foolish 
process.  As  your  machine  grows  more  and  more 
complex,  however,  calling  upon  more  men  of  special 
talents  to  man  it,  it  is  highly  doubtful  if  the  sheer 
natural  “general  intelligence ’ 9  and  abilities  exist  in 
the  human  race  to  pull  you  through.  Even  if  there 
is,  such  a  process  is  as  crude,  unintelligent  and 
wasteful  as  the  grim  method  of  natural  selection  it¬ 
self. 


142 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


It  is,  therefore,  for  you  to  make  a  choice  between 
two  alternatives :  first,  setting  an  enormous  number 
of  your  trained  scientists  at  work  discovering,  edu¬ 
cating  and  allocating  the  varied  mechanical,  indus¬ 
trial,  abstract  and  social  talents  now  in  the  race; 
second,  throwing  mankind  into  the  hopper  of  a  new 
evolution,  with  all  these  unpredictable,  artificial  fac¬ 
tors  added  to  natural  selection,  with  the  possibility, 
indeed  high  probability,  of  wrecking  the  whole  in¬ 
dustrial  machine. 

Perhaps  a  homely  illustration  spoken  in  the  ver¬ 
nacular  by  the  “employment  foreman”  in  a  large 
industrial  establishment  may  throw  some  light  on 
what  is  happening  now  in  man’s  biological  selection. 
It  was  related  by  a  noted  vocational  psychologist 
before  a  recent  national  meeting  of  experts,  seeking 
to  aid  you  in  this  new  form  of  human  evolution. 

“On  Monday,”  said  this  foreman  who  had  been 
given  his  position  of  immense  significance  in  man’s 
biological  evolution,  not  because  of  his  especial  fit¬ 
ness  and  training,  but  because  he  had  lost  a  leg  in 
this  company’s  employ  and  this  was  their  cheap¬ 
est  (?)  method  of  remunerating  him  for  his  dis¬ 
membered  part,  “On  Monday  I  turns  down  all  men 
with  white  collars,  on  Tuesday  all  with  blue  eyes, 
Wednesday  all  with  black  eyes.  Red-headed  men 
I  never  hires,  and  there  do  be  days  when  I  have  a 
grouch  and  hires  every  tenth  man.” 

Now,  there  is  no  evidence  that  red-headed  men 
or  men  with  black  or  blue  eyes,  or  who  have  enough 
ambition  and  sense  of  propriety  to  wear  white  col- 

143 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


lars  are  deficient  in  either  industrial  efficiency  or 
biological  quality;  nor  that  every  tenth  man  pos¬ 
sesses  greater  talents  than  every  ninth  or  twelfth 
man.  Yet  this  industrial  selection,  and  the  assorta- 
tive  mating  which  results  from  it,  takes  an  enor¬ 
mous  proportion  of  the  place  formerly  occupied  by 
nature  in  deciding  who  should  survive  and  who  per¬ 
ish  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  And  whether  this 
selection,  this  vast  experimental  breeding,  which 
is  going  on,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Shaw  and  Mr.  Chesterton, 
be  wise  or  idiotic,  incalculably  affects  not  only  your 
output  of  wealth  but  also  the  Whole  trend  of  human 
evolution.  Nobody  knows  precisely  where  it  is  go¬ 
ing,  but  may  the  defender  of  eugenics  say  to  its  crit¬ 
ics  that  it  is  going  somewhere  and  going  with  enor¬ 
mous  tide,  volume  and  rapidity? 

Taking  up  the  second  phase,  that  is,  the  social 
and  political  measurement  of  men,  Thorndike,  as  I 
have  elsewhere  noted,  ascribes  three  intelligences 
to  man:  first,  mechanical;  second,  social,  and  third, 
abstract.  Our  present  instruments  probably  succeed 
in  measuring  the  mechanical  and  abstract  better 
than  the  social  intelligence.  But  since  they  are  all 
rather  highly  correlated — probably  about  forty  to 
fifty  per  cent.,  to  use  a  somewhat  loose  statement  of 
correlation — if  we  can  well  measure  one  we  have  a 
good  line  on  the  other  two.  And  since  we  can  pretty 
well  measure  two— -the  abstract  and  mechanical — 
and  in  no  small  degree  evaluate  phases  of  the  third, 
the  result  is  that  the  social  traits  and  capacities  of 
man  are  not  altogether  beyond  a  moderately  accur¬ 
ate  estimation  even  to-day. 

144 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Vocational  selection  alone,  which  is  rapidly  pro¬ 
ceeding  among  all  far-seeing,  humane  employers, 
will  be  a  long  step  toward  securing  the  three  basic 
eugenical  qualities,  namely,  health,  sanity  and  en¬ 
ergy.  It  is  being  powerfully  and  ably  promoted  by 
the  Psychology  Corporation  of  New  York,  under  the 
leadership  of  Dr.  J.  McKeen  Cattell.  I  look  for 
these  undertakings  to  attain  a  very  high  eugenical, 
racial  significance.  They  will  fit  the  man  to  his  job' 
and  the  job  to  the  man.  They  will  tend  strongly  to 
throw  men  and  women  of  similar  mental  and  phy¬ 
sical  traits  together,  with  the  result  that  they  will 
naturally  and  happily  tend  to  marry  each  other. 
This  mil  encourage  the  preservation  by  intermar¬ 
riage  of  these  excellent,  even  if  mediocre,  qualities, 
to  the  immense  benefit  not  only  of  your  industrial 
society  but  to  the  soundness  and  safety  of  the  race. 

But  when,  in  addition  to  measuring  men  indus¬ 
trially,  we  can  with  considerable  success  measure 
them  socially  and  politically,  the  world  will  be  fairly 
■well  started  upon  a  true  evolutionary  civilization. 
If  all  men  were  thus  measured  by  every  device  of 
science,  and  their  mental  and  physical  profiles 
not  only  charted  but  made  matters  of  public  rec¬ 
ord,  we  would  know  each  man’s  real  contribution, 
both  to  the  social  and  political  order  and  to  the 
racial  make-up.  In  this  human  chart,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  a  man  is  a  network  of  many  ancestors,  and 
since  every  man  carries  within  himself  a  host  of 
family  skeletons  and  a  host  of  family  virtues,  none 
of  which  he  may  exhibit  in  his  own  body  or  char- 

145 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


acter,  it  would  be  necessary  to  include  three  or  four 
generations  of  his  ancestors  in  estimating  his  racial 
value.  By  appropriate  calculations,  this  can 
with  encouraging  success  be  done-more  encourag¬ 
ing  every  day.  Indeed,  as  asserted  by  Col.  Robert 
M.  Yerkes,  it  will  doubtless  be  possible  in  no  great 
time  to  measure  a  man  mentally,  physically  and 
temperamentally  as  accurately  as  a  bar  of  steel.  J. 
B.  S.  Haldane,  the  British  biologist,  has  recently 
asserted  upon  sound  biological  data,  that  nothing 
but  refinement  of  present  technique  and  knowledge 
stands  in  the  way  of  our  producing  human  beings 
largely  by  artificial  means.  There  can  be  little  ques¬ 
tion  that  in  time  this  will  be  done.  Every  step 
we  take  fills  man’s  pathway  with  greater  pos¬ 
sibilities  and  perils.  It  shows  the  danger  to  the 
whole  social  organism  if  you  do  not  enter  with  the 
scientist  into  both  the  spirit  and  intellectual  method 
of  his  tremendous  discoveries. 

For  a  generation  or  two,  any  such  social  and  po¬ 
litical,  or  racial  weighing  and  measurement  of  men 
would  have  to  proceed  with  extreme  moderation 
and  latitude.  Men  and  women  are  already  being 
radically  and  boldly  rated  as  to  their  physical,  men¬ 
tal  and  temperamental  values,  both  in  industry  and 
in  our  schools  and  colleges.  Their  destinies  are 
thus  profoundly  influenced.  No  serious  doubt  has 
arisen  as  to  the  immense  advantage  both  to  indus¬ 
try  and  education  of  this  process.  There  seems, 
therefore,  no  reason  why,  even  in  our  generation, 
they  might  not  be  moderately  and  cautiously  rated 

146 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


as  to  their  social  and  political  value  in  the  state  and 
their  biological  weight  in  the  racial  stream.  You 
must  first  of  all  cease  treating  men  in  the  mass  and 
recognize  that  men  are  ineradicably  unequal.  You 
must  measure  these  inequalities  as  rapidly  as  sci¬ 
ence  can  do  it,  even  approximately,  and  build  your 
government  upon  them.  Nothing  brings  men  great¬ 
er  misery  than  the  sentimentalism  which  fails  to 
recognize  their  inequalities  and  fit  society  itself  to 
this  most  outstanding  fact  of  human  nature.  You 
must  measure  human  differences  and  give  each  man 
social,  political  and  industrial  responsibility  accord¬ 
ing  to  his  several  abilities  and  character.  You  must 
also  give  him  his  racial  chance — the  privilege  of 
parenthood  in  the  same  degree.  This  latter,  how¬ 
ever,  will  result  naturally  through  social  ideals,  ta¬ 
boos  and  customs,  when  men  and  women  are  taught 
to  recognize  and  evaluate  a  man’s  real  biological 
worth. 

However,  the  following  important  considerations 
emerge  here.  In  fitting  a  man  successfully  and  hap¬ 
pily  in  industry  the  psychologist  does  two  things. 
He  first  measures  the  man  and  then  measures  the 
job.  He  then  fits  the  two  together.  He  finds  how  ' 
much  intelligence  and  what  type  of  temperament  a' 
job  requires,  and  then  finds  a  man  who  fulfills  these  * 
requirements.  Thus  the  job  and  the  man  fit  each 
other  to  the  immense  benefit  of  both.  But  another 
step  will  be  necessary  in  order  to  bring  about  a  true 
aristo-democracy.  Men  must  be  measured  much 
more  completely.  For  you  need  not  only  industrial, 

147 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


mechanical  and  economic  efficiency,  but  you  need 
social  and  political  efficiency.  You  must  next  meas¬ 
ure  how  much  intelligence,  and  what  type  of  tem¬ 
perament  and  ivhat  qualities  of  character  are  re¬ 
quired  to  make  a  good  citizen . 

Nobody  now  knows  this  important  thing.  You 
have  assumed  that  everybody  could  vote  except  ob¬ 
vious  imbeciles.  Yet  we  find  in  industry  that  a  man 
may  be  a  genius  as  a  teamster  and  an  idiot  as  a 
watchmaker,  and  vice  versa.  Also,  many  a  good 
watchmaker  or  teamster  or  college  professor  may 
be  a  poor  citizen.  Such  a  man  may  lack  general  in¬ 
telligence,  or  emotional  interest  or  character.  A 
teamster  may  possess  great  emotional  interest  and 
sound  character,  and  thus,  with  but  moderate  intelli¬ 
gence  of  the  abstract  type,  may  make  a  splendid 
voting  citizen.  The  college  professor  or  doctor 
may  have  great  intelligence,  but  lack  sadly  those 
temperamental  elements  of  character  required  for 
sound  citizenship.  Obviously,  the  first  need  is  for 
you  to  endow  research  upon  a  large  scale  to  meas¬ 
ure  the  social  and  political  intelligences  of  men  and 
correlate  these  findings  with  all  other  available 
data.  At  present,  beyond  question,  you  are  voting 
an  enormous  amount  of  social  and  political  im¬ 
becility. 

Two  things  must  next  be  ascertained:  first,  hoiv 
intelligent  a  man  should  he  to  vote  at  all,  and  second , 
how  much  intelligence  the  job  of  voting  requires. 
It  may  be  found  that  some  men  can  vote  intelligently 
upon  some  problems — such  as  fundamental  human 

148 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


rights — and  can  vote  only  idiotically  on  others. 
To-day  yon  permit  a  man  to  vote  on  all  questions, 
although  it  may  he  he  can  vote  with  splendid  in¬ 
telligence  upon  the  right  of  search  and  seizure, 
habeas  corpus  or  the  wages  in  his  craft,  but  could 
not  vote  any  better  than  an  imbecile  upon  debt-re¬ 
funding,  national  defense  or  international  policy. 
In  short,  no  society  can  be  efficient  where  every 
sort  of  duty  is  assigned  to  every  sort  of  man. 

But,  if,  with  all  these  difficulties,  men  could  even 
in  moderate  and  cautious  degree  be  measured  it 
would  have  two  great  politico-biological  conse¬ 
quences.  First,  it  would  enormously  improve  social 
and  political  efficiency,  and  second,  it  would  set 
up  true  values  and  sound  norms  of  assortative  mat¬ 
ing.  This  latter  is  the  final  aim  of  eugenics.  By  as¬ 
sortative  mating,  which  is  one  of  the  great  forces  in 
evolution,  is  meant  the  tendency  of  like  to  mate  with 
like. 

This  is  a  tremendous  force  all  through  nature 
and  probably  reaches  its  climax  in  man.  Contrary 
to  popular  opinion — which  is  always  wrong  upon 
questions  of  natural  law  unless  it  has  been  tested 
and  corrected  by  science — opposites  do  not  often 
marry  each  other.  People  as  a  rule  marry  those 
who  strongly  resemble  themselves.  Good  people,  if 
thrown  into  contact,  tend  strongly  to  assort  with 
and  marry  good  people.  Tall  people  generally  mar¬ 
ry  tall  people,  and  the  shorts  marry  the  shorts.  The 
fats  marry  the  fats  and  the  slims  marry  the  slims. 
Intelligence,  wherever  given  an  opportunity,  mates 

149 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


with  intelligence  and  stupidity  with  stupidity.  This 
is  a  thing  of  great  importance  to  statesmanship. 
The  enormous  consequences  of  assortative  mating 
are  just  beginning  to  be  appreciated  even  by  scien¬ 
tific  men.  It  determines  largely  the  trend  of  evolu¬ 
tion.  It  is  the  chief  point  of  eugenical  attack.  If 
evolution  should  build  up  at  great  expense  a  char¬ 
acter,  such  as  musical  ability,  beauty  or  mechanical 
intelligence,  and  then  make  it  repulsive  to  the  oppo¬ 
site  sex  she  would  wreck  all  her  work.  But  since  like 
selects  like  and  if  possible  mates  with  it,  it  tends 
powerfully  to  preserve  in  the  offspring  the  virtues 
which  enabled  the  parents,  themselves,  to  survive. 
Where  the  parents  are  defective,  it  tends  also 
through  like  finding  its  like  to  intensify  their  mu¬ 
tual  defects,  until  they  prove  fatal  to  the  offspring, 
and  this  strain  is  thus  happily  eliminated. 

But,  in  the  indiscriminate  vortex  of  society,  these 
great  tendencies  of  untold  value  to  man’s  organic 
destiny  are  not  given  proper  scope.  It  is  true  that 
the  industrial  revolution  and  mechanization  of 
man’s  whole  environment,  have  brought  in  a  few 
new  and  healthful  tendencies  in  mate  selection.  The 
automobile  and  wide  communication  are  probably 
among  them.  Industrial  civilization  is  not  all  bad. 
But  it  is  extremely  doubtful  if  the  good  selective 
effects  of  industrialism  make  up  for  its  undoubted 
destructive  tendencies.  But  were  all  men  measured 
and  rated  even  with  the  greatest  moderation  and 
latitude,  each  man  would  be  much  better  known  than 
he  is  now  for  just  what  he  is  worth.  Wealth  could 

150 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


not  so  easily  cloak  stupidity,  nor  rags  conceal  gen¬ 
ius.  Men  would  drift  much  more  easily  and  happily 
toward  their  natural  levels.  I  regret  that  I  can  not 
extend  my  arguments  to  show  how  I  think  this  pro¬ 
gram  would  result  in  a  great  spread  of  social,  indus¬ 
trial  and  political  tolerance.  But  much  more  than 
now  the  truly  good  man,  good  biologically  and 
psychologically,  would  rise,  and  in  his  new  station 
marry  his  like  and  perpetuate  the  combined  virtues 
of  himself  and  his  wife  in  the  breed.  The  man  less 
endowed  would  fall  more  surely  than  he  does  now 
into  his  proper  and  withal  happier  niche,  and  there 
perpetuate  his  sound  and  healthy  mediocrity.  The 
bad  man  would  be  soon  discovered  and  eliminated 
from  reproduction. 

I  regret,  also,  Your  Excellency,  that  space  does 
not  permit  me  to  detail  many  other  excellent  social, 
political  and  biological  results  which  I  think  are 
bound  to  flow  from  such  a  program.  Nor  have  I  the 
space  to  answer  your  quite  reasonable  objections. 
You  will  have  a  number,  I  am  sure,  since  I  think 
this  is  the  first  time  these  considerations  have  been 
jmesented  to  the  public.  But  obviously  all  previous 
societies  have  failed  because  they  did  not  know  how 
to  measure  human  nature  and  provide  for  it.  We 
now  know  human  nature  vastly  better  than  ever 
before.  The  scientist  stands  ready  to  lend  you  his 
discoveries  about  it.  I  am  convinced  that  by  mutual 
tolerance  and  compromise  of  his  views  with  your 
expert  knowledge  of  political  mechanics  that  society 
and  the  racial  constitution  would  gain  incalculably. 

151 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


For,  when  all  is  said,  nothing  else  can  be  true 
civilization,  true  humanistic  society  except,  first,  the 
selection  by  intelligence,  second,  the  education  by 
social  environment,  and  third,  the  preservation  and 
transmission  by  heredity  of  everything  beautiful 
and  ennobling  in  human  nature  and  physique  that 
rises  above  the  protoplasmic  stream.  It  must  fit 
those  possessing  any  true  excellence  to  the  environ¬ 
ment,  and  shape  the  environment  so  as  to  preserve 
and  constantly  intensify  this  excellence.  For  this 
reason  vocational  education  and  adjustment,  social 
and  political  measurement  and  education,  and  hu¬ 
manistic  culture,  must  all  combine  to  discover  each 
human  worth  and  fit  the  individual  possessing  it  to 
an  ever- widening  environment  which  the  descend¬ 
ants  of  such  a  scientific  and  humanistic  social  order 
are  bound  from  their  inborn  excellence  to  build. 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Humanizing  Industry 

In  approaching  the  problems  of  business  and  in¬ 
dustry,  both  of  us  are  doubtless  agreed,  Your  Ex¬ 
cellency,  that  what  we  need  is  plain,  hard-headed 
horse  sense,  and  not  vague,  impractical  theories.  It 
is  your  especial  claim,  however,  that  this  is  the  kind 
of  sense  you  have  used  and  the  spirit  in  which  you 
have,  for  the  past  century  and  a  half,  approached 
the  situation.  But,  since  both  industry  and  business 
are  still  not  far  removed  from  chaos,  and  scarcely 
anybody  is  satisfied  with  the  result,  least  of  all 
yourself,  it  raises  the  query  as  to  whether  your  idea 
as  to  what  constitutes  horse  sense  has  been  entirely 
correct.  The  outcome  has  not  been  millennial. 

In  addition,  during  all  this  period  many  earnest 
scholars,  calling  themselves  political  economists 
and  political  scientists,  have  given  you  much  high- 
sounding  advice  which  you  have  in  the  main  treated 
with  scorn.  Your  scorn  now  turns  out  to  have  been 
in  the  main  justified.  Their  deductive,  a  priori 
political  economy  served  well  as  drill  material  to 
discipline  the  minds  of  college  students..  When 
these  same  students,  however,  later  became  indus¬ 
trial  managers,  they  seemed  to  find  as  little  use  for 
their  hard  learned  theories  about  the  “  economic 

153 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


man  ’  ’  and  the  profit  and  pleasure  economy  of  hypo¬ 
thetical  human  nature,  as  they  did  for  their  Latin 
and  Greek  in  settling  strikes,  or  determining  wages. 

It  seems  clear  now,  after  a  generation  of  experi¬ 
ments  upon  the  human  mind  and  body,  experiments 
upon  mental  operations,  emotional  reactions,  the 
physiological  bases  of  behavior,  fatigue,  energy, 
glandular  dynamics  and  the  like — a  generation  of 
experimenting  instead  of  arm-chair  theorizing — 
that  both  you  and  the  academicians  were  in  pretty 
dense  ignorance  of  the  very  thing  you  were  dealing 
with,  namely  human  nature.  What  makes  this  seem 
still  more  evident  is  that,  during  the  past  decade  or 
more,  an  increasing  number  of  far-sighted  business 
men  have  cautiously  applied  many  of  the  results 
obtained  by  these  experiments  with  very  gratify¬ 
ing  results  both  to  the  capitalist  and  laborer.  The 
outcome  has  been  at  least  encouraging  enough  so 
that  forward-looking  industrial  statesmen,  as  well 
as  the  new  type  of  biological,  psychological  and  eco¬ 
nomic  scholars,  feel  that  if  social  reconstruction  can 
not  proceed  hopefully  along  these  lines,  then  we 
know  of  nothing  else  to  try.  Nothing  seems  left  but 
the  chaotic  muddling  which  has  justly  given  the 
name  of  The  Industrial  Devolution  instead  of  The 
Industrial  Evolution  to  the  past  century  and  a  half. 
But,  with  the  new  spirit  and  new  knowledge  of  hu¬ 
man  beings  regnant,  it  is  hoped  that  the  latter  will 
be  the  name  of  the  era  that  lies  just  ahead. 

Two  great  questions  thus  arise  before  Industrial 
statesmanship.  The  first  was  suggested  by  reading 

154 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Prof.  G.  T.  W.  Patrick’s  little  book,  The  Psychology 
of  Social  Reconstruction,  one  of  the  best  books 
about  life  that  I  have  ever  read.  I  can  not  but  think 
that  Your  Excellency  would  find  it  extremely  sug¬ 
gestive  of  many  helpful  reforms  as  well  as  new  men¬ 
tal  attitudes  in  statecraft.  The  second  question 
comes,  I  think,  naturally  to  the  mind  of  any  one  who 
has  made  the  immense  body  of  current  psycho-bio¬ 
logical  literature  an  occasion  for  his  own  thinking. 

The  first  question  is:  What  would  happen  to  a 
society  whose  troubles  were  all  over!  If  all  the 
Utopias  from  Plato’s  Ideal  Republic  and  St.  Augus¬ 
tine’s  City  of  God  down  to  Karl  Marx’s  Manifesto 
and  Mr.  Wells’  futurist  speculations,  should  all  de¬ 
scend  upon  mankind  at  once,  would  the  human  be¬ 
ings  which  modern  psycho-biology  and  physiology 
have  revealed  be  happy?  Would  we  not  within  a 
week  have  on  our  hands  a  revolt  which,  as  the  late 
Carleton  H.  Parker  wrote  to  a  friend  4  ‘  would  make 
Bolshivik  Russia  seem  like  a  dilapidated  Christian 
Endeavor  Convention”?  I  am  inclined  to  think  we 
would.  I  think  that  the  new  sort  of  creature  which 
psychology  has  revealed  this  Homo  Sapiens  to  be, 
is  a  complete  and  final  answer  to  at  least  three- 
fourths  of  all  the  ready-made  plans  for  making  men 
happy  by  reconstructing  our  social  machinery.  The 
kind  of  being  that  they  would  fit  does  not  exist.  At 
least  the  most  exhaustive  search,  with  the  most  re¬ 
fined  instruments  of  science,  has  failed  to  find  him. 

The  second  question  is:  What  would  happen  if 
our  labor  leaders,  capitalists  and  politicians  should 

155 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


suddenly  adjourn  their  numerous  conferences  for 
settling  strikes,  working  hours  and  conditions, 
wages,  division  of  profits  and  the  like,  and  all  go  to 
school  together  to  our  psychologists,  physiologists 
and  biologists?  What  would  happen  if  they  should 
go  down  into  the  laboratories  and  absorb  not  only 
the  spirit  and  method  by  which  these  men  approach 
their  problems,  but  also  become  possessed  of  their 
new  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  draw  upon  it 
for  the  working  theories  of  industry? 

These  scientific  students  have  been  forced  by 
their  investigations  to  make  radical  alterations  in 
their  own  views  as  to  what  makes  social  institutions 
and  what  really  guides  human  society.  They  find 
that  men  are  moved  by  different  currents  from  the 
ones  that  have  seemed  heretofore  so  obvious  to 
labor  leaders,  capitalists  and  economists.  These  cur¬ 
rents  are  deep,  obscure  but  powerful.  They  range 
all  the  way  from  personal  vanity  to  religious  reli¬ 
ance  upon  God.  The  Freudians  maintain  that 
some  of  them  are  revealed  only  in  the  world  of 
dreams. 

Suppose,  now,  that  those  responsible  for  modern 
industry  should  go  to  school  for  a  long  time  with 
such  men  as  Thorndike,  Colvin,  Terman,  Pinter, 
Yerkes,  Watson,  MacDougall,  Stanley  Hall,  Graham 
Wallas,  Walter  Lippmann,  Walter  Weyl,  Bertrand 
Russell,  George  P.  Adams,  James  Jackson  Putnam, 
Ordway  Tead,  Thorstein  Yeblen,  Franklin  H.  Gid- 
dings,  Everett  Dean  Martin,  James  Harvey  Robin¬ 
son,  Whiting  Williams,  J ohn  Dewey,  Trotter, 

156 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


LeBon,  Ross,  Hollingsworth,  Cattell,  Mitchell,  Pat¬ 
rick,  Seashore,  Davenport,  Bateson,  Castle,  Thomas 
Hunt  Morgan,  Pearson,  Pearl,  Woods,  Cannon,  Lee, 
Crile,  and  the  disciples  of  Freud !  These  men  have 
given  us  as  different  an  idea  as  to  what  man  is,  as 
Gallileo  gave  us  as  to  what  the  world  is. 

I  do  not  know,  Sir,  any  better  than  you  do  what 
would  happen.  But  I  know  it  would  be  something 
very  important.  It  might  indeed  be  something 
truly  imposing  in  its  significance  for  the  future  of 
mankind. 

I  imagine  you  were  taught  in  your  college  days, 
as  I  was,  that  man  is  a  docile,  peace-loving,  money- 
loving,  working  animal,  whose  motives  are  high 
wages,  short  hours,  leisure,  food,  sleep,  peace  and 
pleasure.  We  were  also  assured  that  a  society  that 
had  no  war,  alcohol,  inequality,  autocracy,  poverty, 
or  special  privilege,  and  which  did  have  democracy, 
universal  education,  women’s  suffrage,  the  rights 
of  man,  equality  of  opportunity,  peace,  a  full  din¬ 
ner  pail,  and  leisure  for  self-improvement  was 
the  true  goal  of  the  world’s  desire.  This  is  almost 
precisely  the  kind  of  things  we  hear  our  labor  lead¬ 
ers,  politicians  and  capitalists  at  their  round-tables 
still  talking  about.  Both  sides  seem  to  believe,  as 
we  all  did  a  generation  ago,  that  if  the  men — 
they  still  talk  of  men  in  the  mass  instead  of  men  as 
unique  and  remarkable  persons — if  the  men  could 
only  secure  these  things,  especially  more  wealth,  all 
would  be  well.  A  generation  ago,  for  instance,  we 
were  assured  that  when  laborers  got  an  eight-hour 

157 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


day  they  would  spend  the  balance  of  their  time  in 
self-improvement,  the  latter  being  rather  vague¬ 
ly  envisaged  as  reading  good  books,  enjoying  good 
pictures,  or  good  music  or  good  something;  or  else 
they  would  take  up  some  healthful  avocation  such 
as  wood  carving,  interior  decoration  and  even  writ¬ 
ing  poetry.  It  did  not  occur  to  us  that  they  might 
really  enjoy  good  prize  fights  or  good  deviltry  of 
some  sort — even  a  good  war.  In  fact  millions  of 
men  and  women  have  now  achieved  an  eight-hour 
day,  and  yet  the  visible  output  of  peace  or  poetry 
has  not  sensibly  increased. 

It  has  led  our  experimenters  to  feel  that  nearly 
all  of  us  have  been  working  upon  wrong  theories  of 
human  nature.  These  probing  students  now  believe 
that  man  is  an  adventurous,  dynamic,  fight-loving 
animal,  motivated  by  age-old  instincts  and  broad 
organic  trends,  many  of  them  unconscious,  and  that 
what  man  really  wants  is  not  wealth  or  pleasure,  as 
such,  but  opportunity  for  rich  activity — activity 
which  will  in  itself  be  the  fulfillment  of  normal 
function.  Man  wants  chiefly,  they  believe,  the  sat¬ 
isfaction  of  his  organic  impulses,  those  patterns  in 
his  very  nervous  system  which  are  either  inborn  or 
else  extremely  easily  acquired. 

“Nothing  is  more  foolish,”  says  Prof.  E.  A.  Eoss 
in  his  Principles  of  Sociology,  “than  to  imagine 
that  all  the  defects  in  people  flow  from  defects  in 
society,  and  will  vanish  if  only  we  organize  society 
on  right  lines.  Some  of  the  traits  developed  in  man 
a  hundred  centuries  ago  make  trouble  now  and  will 
have  to  be  allowed  for  aeons  hence.” 

158 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


The  new  psychology  finds  that  man  instead  of 
being  a  creature  easily  satisfied  with  high  wages  is 
a  restless  being  who  naturally  loves  to  hunt,  wan¬ 
der,  brawl,  intrigue,  drink,  play,  dance  and  sing, 
take  risks,  and  at  the  same  time  seek  safety  under 
a  leader  or  symbol  of  security,  and  above  all  pre¬ 
serve  the  sense  of  his  own  importance.  As  Profes¬ 
sor  Patrick  says:  “The  twelve  labors  of  Hercules 
turn  out  upon  examination  to  be  for  the  most  part 
exciting  adventures.  The  gods  of  all  nations,  who 
supposedly  typify  the  happy  ideal  life  are  seldom 
represented  as  working.  The  Greek  gods  did  not 
work;  they  banqueted,  intrigued,  fought  and  loved 
women.  Only  Hepheastus  worked  and  he  was  the 
joke  of  the  Greek  Pantheon.  Our  own  God  is  not 
pictured  as  working,  at  least  only  six  days.  He  is 
a  king,  warrior,  legislator,  judge,  and  enjoys  praise 

1  ***'  qL 

and  song.” 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  brief  chapter  to 
evaluate  all  this  new  biological  psychology,  nor  to 
outline  to  statesmanship  some  program  of  proced¬ 
ure  guaranteed  to  bring  satisfaction  to  the  indus¬ 
trial  world.  But,  it  is  hoped  that  the  attention  of 
statesmanship  may  be  directed  toward  this  vast 
body  of  new  wisdom  which  must  be  taken  into  ac¬ 
count  if  irrational  men  are  ever  to  be  brought  under 
rational  control.  It  has  practically  exploded  the 
happiness  and  pleasure,  political  economy  and  psy¬ 
chology  of  two  centuries.  In  its  place  we  have  set 
forth  for  consideration  a  being  motivated  very  little 
by  logic,  but  mainly  by  emotions,  wills  to  power, 

159 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


4  4 drives/  ’  strange  likes  and  dislikes — one  who 
spends  most  of  his  life  in  trying  to  convince  both 
himself  and  others  that  all  his  acts  are  wise,  just 
and  reasonable,  whereas  most  of  them  are  unrea¬ 
sonable  and  occur  merely  because  he  is  built  that 

«/ 

way.  For  instance  you  have  thought  to  bring  indus¬ 
trial  peace  by  various  manipulations  of  the  pay  en¬ 
velope.  But  when  we  find  a  strike  caused  by  the  fact 
that  certain  types  of  machinery,  without  safety  de¬ 
vices,  compelled  woman  workers  to  arrange  their 
hair  in  a  manner  unbecoming  to  feminine  beauty, 
and  reflect  how  deeply  this  is  connected  with  pro¬ 
found  sex-impulses  that  were  gray  with  age  long  be¬ 
fore  organized  industry  was  dreamed  of,  it  is  bound 
to  give  us  new  conceptions  of  the  difficulty  of  so¬ 
cial  reconstruction. 

Upon  this  point  Professor  Patrick  quotes  the 
economist,  Wesley  C.  Mitchell,  as  follows:  In  em¬ 
bracing  the  new  psychology,  4  4  Political  economy 
will  asume  a  new  character.  It  will  cease  to  be  a 
system  of  pecuniary  logic,  a  mechanical  study  of 
static  equilibria  under  non-existent  conditions  and 
become  a  science  of  human  behavior.  ” 

It  is,  indeed,  only  when  both  political  and  indus¬ 
trial  statesmanship  see  themselves  as  merely  or¬ 
ganic  extensions  and  intelligent  administration  of 
the  science  of  human  behavior  that  they  will  serve 
their  true  functions  in  man’s  social  development. 
The  new  psychology  shows  us  that  if  our  troubles 
were  all  over,  in  the  sense  in  which  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  troubles  are  usually  conceived  and  stated,  if  the 

160 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


world  were  made  over  into  a  sort  of  super- Chautau¬ 
qua  of  culture,  good  clothes,  plenty  to  eat  and  broth¬ 
erly  love,  yet,  the  sort  of  beings  that  psychologists 
have  found  men  to  be,  could  exist  but  could  not 
live  in  such  a  standardized,  sterilized  world.  Yet, 
nearly  all  our  modern  social  regeneration  move¬ 
ments  are  merely  sloganized  epitomes  of  just  such  a 
Chautauqua tized  world.  They  are  devoted  to  devel¬ 
oping  the  necessary  machinery  for  bringing  men  to 
just  such  a  parlous  state  of  social  and  political  stag¬ 
nation.  As  Professor  James  said  in  his  famous 
Chautauqua  lectures,  in  all  such  schemes,  “the  pre¬ 
cipitous  element  is  left  out.” 

Perhaps  we  see  this  as  clearly  defined  as  any¬ 
where  in  the  tendency  of  men,  since  religion  has  lost 
much  of  its  hold,  and  the  state  has  become  too  huge 
and  far  away  to  furnish  a  substitute  sufficiently 
sizable  for  men’s  imaginations  to  grasp — the  ten¬ 
dency  to  organize  into  lodges,  unions,  societies  for 
abolishing  this  or  that  evil — as  though  hiding 
an  evil  from  sight  abolished  men’s  inborn  impulses. 
We  see  this  particularly  in  certain  societies  which 
are  supposed  even  by  their  members  to  possess 
some  of  the  esoteric  secrets  of  life.  Everett  Dean 
Martin  and  Professor  Patrick  have  outlined  better 
than  any  one  else  the  psychology  of  such  phenomena. 

“Movements  such  as  Socialism,  Bolshevism,  and 
the  I.  W.  W.,”  says  Profesor  Patrick,  “become 
cults  to  which  their  followers  offer  a  loyalty  and 
devotion  that  is  symbolic  of  the  whole  life  of  man  in 
history.  If  these  cults  meet  with  opposition,  if 

161 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


there  is  a  little  mystery  about  them,  if  they  inspire 
a  little  fear,  if  there  is  a  kind  of  underground  com¬ 
munication  among  the  members,  if  there  are  certain 
secret  symbols,  if  there  is  a  chance  for  something 
like  martyrdom,  if  there  exists  a  strong  feeling  of 
brotherhood  within  the  organization,  the  spirit  of 
loyalty  and  devotion  burns  brightly.  But  the  pecul¬ 
iar  fact  here  is  that  we,  who  are  adherents  of  any  of 
these  movements,  never  suspect  that  in  our  devo¬ 
tion,  our  enthusiasm,  our  loyalty,  our  sacrifice,  even 
our  fanaticism,  we  are  simply  living;  that  we  are 
experiencing  life’s  great  realities  themselves,  that 
we  have  here  the  fulfillment  of  function.  We  do  not 
understand  that  this  expression  of  our  instinctive 
life  is  life  itself.  We  think  we  are  engaged  in  a 
movement  that  will  prepare  men  for  life.  We  think 
that  when  the  particular  kind  of  social  order  which 
we  are  striving  for  is  realized,  then  we  shall  live.” 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  these  mimic  and  mostly 
useless  activities,  we  are  living  now.  "When  the  pre¬ 
cipitous  element,  the  adventure,  hazard,  jeopardy 
and  sense  of  importance  of  ourselves  are  absent  we 
seek  to  put  them  there  by  artificial  means.  Man 
possesses  reason,  but  this  is  no  proof  that  he  lives 
by  it  or  enjoys  using  it.  He  thinks  only  when  he  has 
to.  The  rest  of  his  life  is  simply  irrational  fulfillment 
of  his  organic  make-up.  True,  he  thinks  it  is  ra¬ 
tional.  He  thinks  he  is  thinking.  Indeed  he  spends 
most  of  his  life  giving  rational  excuses  for  his  irra¬ 
tional  acts.  But  men  are  not  much  removed  from 
boys  who  play  that  they  are  savage  chieftains  out 

*  162 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


upon  some  warlike  enterprise.  Men  seem  to  put 
away  childish  things,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
main,  they  merely  hide  them  behind  some  ponderous 
solemnity — some  rational  looking  camouflage. 

Obviously,  then,  no  mere  pay-envelope,  pecun¬ 
iary,  self-interest,  wage  philosophy  will  ever  hu¬ 
manize  industry  for  a  being  so  complex  as  this,  one 
so  full  of  contradictions.  Men  must  have  wages  but 
they  must  have  much  more.  The  mere  fact  that 
when  war  was  declared  in  1918,  the  hospitals  for  the 
insane  were  nearly  one-fourth  emptied  of  their  in¬ 
mates,  and  that  unnumbered  chronic  melancholics 
and  hypochondriacs  took  on  new  life  as  though 
there  had  been  a  Second  Coming  of  the  Lord,  and 
thousands  of  neighborhood  quarrels  and  family  dif¬ 
ferences  disappeared  like  magic,  is  ample  evidence 
that  the  genus  homo  is  a  strange  creature  and  one 
hard  to  manage.  He  certainly  can  not  be  managed 
by  any  simple,  self-interest,  happiness  formula.  War 
is  irrational  but  it  is  not  abnormal.  It  is  a  perfectly 
normal  fulfillment  of  function — a  mere  continua¬ 
tion  of  man’s  whole  evolutionary  historv.  And  in- 
dustrial  strife  is  probably  a  more  normal  thing  than 
industrial  peace. 

Man  has  never  known  peace  and  safety  in  his 
whole  existence.  He  can  not  get  used  to  them  all  at 
once.  Peace  will  come  only  as  the  long  result  of 
education,  and  then  it  must  be  not  a  Utopianized 
Chautauqua  but  a  peace  full  of  virile  and  adventur¬ 
ous  satisfactions.  When  we  see  timid  and  appar¬ 
ently  peaceful  bank  clerks  and  department  store 

163 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


girls,  as  well  as  cloistered  philosophers  and  labora¬ 
tory  students,  on  Sunday  riding  Ferris-wheels, 
shooting  the  shoots,  making  high  dives  and  taking 
tail  spins  in  airplanes,  we  see  plainly  that  man  was 
not  naturally  horn  to  attend  Sunday-school.  He 
will  do  so  only  under  compulsion,  or  superstition, 
or  else  an  education  that  leads  him  to  see  in  it  some 
richer  experience  and  value  to  the  mind  than  run¬ 
ning  down  some  steep  place  into  the  sea,  which  he 
often  does  merely  to  give  the  devil  in  him  a  chance 
for  exercise.  True,  man  loves  his  home,  his  pipe 
and  his  fireside,  but  he  enjoys  them  only  after  a  day 
of  satisfying  activity.  He  enjoys  them  then  mainly 
that  he  may  recount  to  an  admiring  wife  or  family 
circle  his  remarkable  achievements  during  the  day- 
how  he  talked  up  to  the. boss,  or  told  the  superin¬ 
tendent  what  was  what;  or  slew  a  lion  in  his  pathway 
with  his  bare  hands,  or,  in  some  way,  outdid  his 
fellows  in  personal  prowess.  Saving  our  faces  is 
our  chief est  earthly  occupation.  We  rail  at  snob¬ 
bishness,  yet  it  is  as  natural  as  digestion.  A  whole 
volume  could  be  written  on  the  evolutionary  survival 
value  of  snobbishness.  It  has  had  untold  evolution¬ 
ary  significance  and  has  been  an  important  factor 
in  making  classes  and  races  what  they  are. 

The  notion,  then,  that  some  revolution  that 
merely  overthrows  the  political  government  or 
crushes  the  system,  will  automatically  establish 
a  society  where  such  a  creature  will  be  happy  and 
satisfied  is  as  fatuous  as  the  remark  of  a  feeble¬ 
minded  citizen,  when  a  fight  was  on  in  an  Indiana 

164 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


town  as  to  moving  the  county  court-house  to  some 
other  city:  “You  can  move  the  court-house/ ’  he 
said,  “but  you  can’t  move  the  cellar.”  A  revolu¬ 
tion  might  move  men  into  a  cooperative  common¬ 
wealth  of  peace,  plenty  and  brotherly  love,  but  the 
old  cellar  of  his  evolutionary  trends,  passions  and 
irrationalities  would  remain.  These  can  only  be  re¬ 
directed  or  sublimated  by  the  slow  processes  of  an 
education,  that  will  fill  life  with  new  values,  phi¬ 
losophies  and  objectives. 

As  I  have  previously  argued,  when  men  are 
measured  and  their  emotions  and  intellectual  pow¬ 
ers  fairly  well  distinguished,  it  will  go  a  long  way 
toward  fitting  each  man  into  that  position  in  in¬ 
dustry  and  society  where  his  instinctive  trends, 
likes  and  dislikes  will  be  satisfied,  at  least  to  a  much 
higher  degree  than  is  true  to-day.  But  even  ivith 
this  accomplished,  no  theory  of  industrial  states¬ 
manship  can  longer  leave  out  of  account,  as  its  basic 
working  hypotheses,  the  revolutionary  discoveries 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  human  units  which  it  as¬ 
sumes  to  manage.  As  an  instance,  we  think  we  have 
discerned  the  “cause”  of  some  great  strike  when 
we  see  the  newspaper  head-line — “Men  demand 
more  wages!”  But  when  we  find,  as  Carleton  H. 
Parker  pointed  out,  that  in  1910  nearly  three  and  a 
half  million  migratory  laborers  in  America  were 
without  any  family,  or  normal  relationships  to 
women  or  children  or  home,  any  normal  satisfaction 
of  instincts  a  thousand  times  older  than  industry, 
and  that  more  than  ten  millions  of  unskilled  labor- 

165 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


ers  were  in  little  better  plight,  it  is  evident  that  the 
real  cause  was  not  set  forth  in  the  newspaper 
head-line  nor  in  the  report  of  some  solemn  com¬ 
mission,  but  was  back  in  the  jungle.  Indeed,  many 
times,  probably  most  of  the  time,  neither  capitalists 
nor  laborers  know  why  they  oppress  on  the  one  side 
or  rebel  on  the  other. 

Psychologists  are  not  agreed  either  on  the 
names  or  precise  nature  of  these  inner  demands 
and  drives  that  motivate  men.  Ordway  Tead  lists 
sixteen.  Veblen,  MacDougal  and  others  find  vary¬ 
ing  numbers  and  descriptions.  Thorndike  thinks 
at  least  five  deserve  special  consideration,  which 
he  describes  as  follows  in  Harper’s  Magazine: 

“  First  the  satisfyingness  of  activity,  mental  or 
physical,  at  which  one  can  succeed. 

“Second,  the  satisfyingness  of  mastery. 

“Third,  the  satisfyingness  of  submission  to  the 
right  kind  of  man . 

“Fourth,  the  satisfyingness  of  company  and 
cheerfulness. 

“Fifth,  and  most  important  of  all,  the  satisfy¬ 
ingness  of  that  feeling  that  one  is  somebody  of  con¬ 
sequence  .  .  .  which  we  may  call  the  sense  of  ap¬ 
proval.  9  9 

Under  present  American  conditions  Thorndike 
believes  that  the  last  deserves  to  be  ranked  next  to 
hunger,  sex,  physical  safety,  and  intolerance  of  bod¬ 
ily  pain  as  a  motive  of  conduct. 

Certainly  all  this  presents  a  different  picture  of 
man  from  that  of  classic  political  economy.  How- 

166 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ever,  the  application  of  man’s  inborn  trends  is  even 
more  difficult  than  their  discovery  and  proper 
christening.  Mr.  Whiting  Williams,  in  an  able  series 
of  papers  in  Scribner’s  Magazine,  criticizes  the  idea 
that  instinct  psychology  has  yet  furnished  us  with 
sufficiently  succinct  rules  for  daily  guidance  in  a 
factory.  When  it  comes  to  getting  people  to  do  the 
right  thing  at  the  right  time  it  may  be  a  great  addi¬ 
tion  to  have  a  list  of  man’s  primal  instincts,  hut  as 
one  workman  said  to  Mr.  Williams  in  his  own  ver¬ 
nacular  : 

“Why,  man  alive!  how ’re  you  goin’  to  know? 
You  can’t  put  no  guage  on  ’em,  can  you?  And 
there’s  no  signals  to  give  you  a  ‘Fair  Block!’  or  a 
‘Slow  with  caution!’  nor  nothin’.  It’s  ail  just  guess 
work- — it’s  gotta  be — with  people  so  fickle  and 
fancy-free  like  ’n’  everything.  Nothin’  o’  that  in 
mine,  thank  you !  ’  ’ 

What  we  lack,  thinks  Mr.  Williams,  is  a  common 
denominator  for  the  big  motive  in  each  case.  Sup¬ 
pose,  he  suggests,  that  a  foreman  hears  of  trouble 
and  rushes  over  with  his  list  of  trends  and  instincts 
in  hand  such  as  gregariousness,  parental  bent,  work¬ 
manship,  curiosity,  acquisition,  fear  and  flight, 
anger,  hunger,  self-approval,  or  sex,  with  all  its 
Freudian  frills,  his  difficulty  is  to  decide  upon  which 
one  to  apply  and  how  much  of  each.  Does  he  need  a 
bit  more  of  instinct  No.  5  or  a  bit  less  of  No.  12? 

The  prime  difficulty  is  that  man  evolved  under 
conditions  that  required  the  use  of  man’s  passions 
and  instincts  in  wholly  different  proportions  than 

167 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


is  demanded  in  modern  situations.  “These  high¬ 
speed  multiplex  days,”  continues  Mr.  Williams  in 
italics,  “have  so  decreased  the  proportion  of  the  re¬ 
quirements  of  our  physical  preservation  and  so  in¬ 
creased  the  proportion  of  the  demands  for  our  so¬ 
cial  well-being  as  to  require  some  less  primitive 
statement  of  the  source  of  our  modern  activities. 

6  i  In  these  days  of  the  labor  union,  the  Thirteenth 
Street  gang,  the  federation  of  women’s  clubs  or  the 
League  of  Nations,  the  saving  of  our  physiological 
shins  has  given  way  as  the  chief  of  human  motives 
to  the  saving  of  our  social  faces.  .  .  .  It  is  the 
change  in  the  proportion  of  these  two  compulsions 
— this  I  submit,  is  the  real  change  in  the  setting  of 
the  modern  stage.” 

However,  I  may  say  that  this  change  seems  to 
me  to  be  recognized  by  such  men  as  Tead,  Thorn¬ 
dike,  Taussig,  Martin,  MacDougal,  Yeblen,  Robin¬ 
son  and  others  among  our  social  philosophers  even 
if  not  in  the  precise  form  in  which  Mr.  Williams 
states  the  problem.  They  seem  to  me,  mostly  to 
rank  the  saving  of  our  social  faces,  the  passion  for 
self-esteem  and  social  esteem  next  to  sex,  hunger 
and  bodily  pain  as  moving  forces  in  modern  society. 
And  in  these  respects,  as  I  see  it,  Your  Excellency, 
there  is  no  one  labor  problem,  but  each  laborer 
is  himself  a  labor  problem,  a  problem  in  psychology, 
physiology  and  biology.  Men  are  not  masses  of  un¬ 
differentiated  material  but  the  human  units  of  which 
they  are  made  must  be  isolated  and  their  spiritual 
values  recognized  and  provided  for. 

168 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


This  brief  sketch  is,  therefore,  frankly,  a  mere 
restatement  of  the  new  views  of  human  nature 
which  I  think  have  emerged  from  modern  scholar¬ 
ship.  But  I  trust  it  will  indicate  to  Your  Excel¬ 
lency  that  a  new  type  of  political  economy  and  in¬ 
dustrial  statesmanship  is  already  upon  the  world’s 
intellectual  stage.  It  remains  for  you  to  apply  it. 
The  men  upon  this  stage  are  studying  in  detail  the 
thing  which  you  have  to  manage  in  the  mass,  name¬ 
ly,  human  nature.  We  have  just  begun  to  discover 
what  it  is.  I  hope  this  sketch  of  it  may  indicate 
the  immense  advantage  it  would  be  if  you  and 
your  colleagues  should  go  to  school,  not  to  or  under 
these  men,  but  should  enter  with  them  into  the  lab¬ 
oratory  of  men’s  souls  and  work  patiently  by  their 
sides. 

The  psychologists  and  biologists  can  contribute 
much  to  you,  but  you  can  also  contribute  much  to 
them.  And  out  of  this  entente  cordiale  between  the¬ 
ory  and  practise,  between  experiment  and  manage¬ 
ment,  I  am  sure  there  would  emerge  a  new  and 
sound  philosophy  not  doctrinaire  but  dynamic,  not 
about  hypothetical  men,  but  an  actual  man.  And 
upon  the  basis  of  this  actual  man  you  would,  I 
think,  conceive  it  to  be  the  duty  and  privilege  of 
political  and  social  statesmanship,  to  erect  a  social 
order  that  would  fulfill  the  normal  functions  of  his 
nature,  instead  of,  as  heretofore,  treating  him  by 
turns  as  an  object  of  sentimental  adoration,  mysti¬ 
cal  illusion,  altruistic  pity  or  brutal  exploitation. 

Society  will  never  be  perfect  because  man  him- 

169 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

self  is  not  perfect.  But  it  will  improve  because,  by 
the  inner  drive  of  his  own  structure,  man  is  always 
striving  for  something  better.  And,  unknown  to 
himself,  this  free  and  open  striving  for  something 
better  is  the  very  perfection  which  he  seeks.  With¬ 
out  his  realizing  it,  this  is,  in  itself,  his  social  ideal. 
Industrial  and  social  machinery  can  never  succeed 
so  long  as  its  objective  is  merely  to  produce  wealth, 
unless  wealth  itself  be  conceived  as  the  freeing  of 
men  to  that  adventurous  strife  which  fulfills  the  dy¬ 
namics  of  their  own  biology.  But,  we  shall  never 
even  begin  our  journey  toward  the  Delectable 
Mountains  of  the  Perfect  Society,  or  the  Ideal 
Bepublic,  until  man  is  regarded  honestly,  straight¬ 
forwardly  and,  upon  the  basis  of  experimental 
knowledge,  as  the  strange,  interesting,  contradic¬ 
tory,  childish  and  noble,  but  ultimately  measureable, 
weighable  and  predictable  being  that  he  is,  in¬ 
stead  of  the  simple,  but  mystical  and  unpredictable 
creature  which  philanthropic  sentimentalism,  de¬ 
ductive  metaphysics  and  brutalizing  tyranny,  each 
for  its  own  purposes,  have  thought  that  he  ought  to 
be. 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Preferential  Reproduction 

The  sixth  commandment  is  the  duty  of  preferen¬ 
tial  reproduction  of  the  human  herd . 

Our  Puritan  forefathers  lived  on  parched  com 
but  they  talked  about  God.  They  shot  Indians 
through  the  port-hole  with  one  eye  and  taught  the 
Bible  to  their  children  with  the  other.  And  the 
thing  which  has  transformed  America  from  a  wil¬ 
derness  to  a  world  power  is  that  the  children  per 
family  numbered  from  five  to  fifteen. 

Will  these  men  and  women  of  prayer  and  iron 
and  children  be  America’s  continuing  breed!  Or 
will  the  children  disappear  and  the  prayer  and  iron 
vanish  with  them!  Nothing  is  more  certain  in  sci¬ 
ence  than  that  godly  parents  beget  godly  children 
and  an  ungodly  stock  spawns  a  godless  brood.  In 
the  building  of  nations,  schools,  churches,  industry, 
law  and  order,  a  high-bom  godly  race  is  every¬ 
thing,  absolutely  everything. 

Let  us  then  turn  the  searchlight  of  science  upon 
America’s  family  prospect;  for  the  prospect  of  the 
family  is  the  destiny  of  any  nation.  And  remember 
it  is  always  “the  man  who  is  left ”  whose  children, 
whether  good  or  bad,  replenish  the  earth  in  the  days 
to  come. 


171 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 

In  1920  the  school-teachers  of  America  who  had 
had  any  children  had  given  birth  to  2.2  children  per 
family;  the  bootblacks  had  come  within  one-tenth  of 
giving  birth  to  four! 

Now  bootblacks  may  be  as  worthy  in  the  sight  of 
God  as  school-teachers,  but  it  is  not  their  wont  to  lift 
nations  to  new  levels  of  thought  and  culture,  or  open 
new  horizons  to  the  ken  of  men.  School-teachers, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  among  those  national  saviors 
who  teach  us  new  criticisms,  of  self  and  destiny  and 
touch  the  mind  to  new  adventure.  Moreover  they 
aid  immensely  in  building  civilizations  where  boot¬ 
blacks  may  have  boots  to  shine. 

This  crude  birth  rate,  however,  does  not  measure 
to  the  full  the  relative  contributions  of  bootblacks 
and  school-teachers  to  the  citizenship  of  to-morrow. 
Nearly  all  bootblacks  marry  and  have  children, 
while  scarcely  half  our  school-teachers  ever  marry 
at  all.  We  have  fully  carried  out  the  racially  de¬ 
structive  portion  of  Saint  Paul’s  injunction  and  for¬ 
bidden  a  married  woman  to  teach.  As  if  some  of  the 
richest  strains  of  the  national  blood  were  not  com¬ 
mitting  suicide  fast  enough  you  have  by  law,  prec¬ 
edent,  economic  penalties  and  social  pressure  com¬ 
pelled  them  to  do  so ! 

If  we  look  further  into  one  of  the  most  thrilling 
volumes  of  recent  years,  one  which  ought  to  have 
been  among  the  “best  sellers,”  but  of  which  I  imag¬ 
ine  the  government  had  difficulty  in  giving  away  a 
thousand  copies,  entitled  “The  Sixth  Annual  Report 
of  the  Birth  Statistics  of  the  United  States  ”  we  find 

172 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  in  this  same  year,  1920,  the  lawyers  and  judges 
of  America  who  had  families  had  2.2  living  children, 
while  janitors  and  sextons  had  3.4;  authors,  editors 
and  reporters  had  2.1,  workers  in  stone  quarries 
and  gravel  pits  3.6 ;  skilled  workmen  had  2.6,  boiler 
washers  and  engine  hostlers,  3.1;  doctors  had  2.1, 
skating-rink  and  dance-hall  keepers  had  2.6;  mine 
officials  had  2.9,  mine  laborers  3.6;  while  stenog¬ 
raphers  and  chemists  made  the  poorest  showing  of 
all  with  but  1.8,  and  the  garbage  men  and  scavengers 
one  of  the  best — at  least  one  of  the  highest — with 
practically  three  living  children. 

It  seems,  to  put  it  none  too  strongly,  that  Amer¬ 
ica  is  simply  “hell  bent”  on  taking  a  brief  bio¬ 
logical  joy-ride,  wnth  the  definite  policy  of  later 
turning  over  its  vast  intellectual  conquests  to  the 
morons. 

Now  it  requires  neither  Elijah’s  mantle  nor  Sam 
Weller’s  “million  magnifyin’  glass  that  could  see 
through  a  double  deal  door”  to  read  the  meaning 
of  such  pathetic  and  portentous  figures.  Every 
school  child  knows  that  Burbank,  Schull,  Hanson, 
Davenport  and  others  achieve  their  triumphs  solely 
by  selecting  the  best  specimens  as  parents.  There 
is  no  mystery  about  it.  Farmers  ever  since  Eden 
have  done  the  same  thing,  only  they  lacked  these 
men’s  wizard  eyes  and  technical  methods  to  detect 
the  best. 

But,  suppose  they  bred  chiefly  from  their  worst ! 
Well,  that  is  precisely  what  America,  under  your 
management,  is  doing,  and  wThat  every  civilization 

173 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


has  done  from  the  human  dawn.  For  that  reason 
we  read  their  history  only  in  their  ruins. 

Everywhere  we  turn  in  civilized  lands  we  see 
this  anti-Burbanking  process  in  full  tide.  Every 
nation  on  earth  is  rushing  recklessly  upon  its  bio¬ 
logical  breakers.  With  all  available  facts  as  his 
sounding  board,  in  a  singularly  and  cautious  analy¬ 
sis  entitled  Is  America  Safe  for  Democracy ,  Prof. 
William  MacDougal,  psychologist  of  Harvard, 
sends  out  this  solemn  warning:  “When  I  see  Amer¬ 
ica  dancing  gaily  with  invincible  optimism  down 
the  road  to  destruction,  I  seem  to  be  contemplating 
the  greatest  tragedy  in  the  history  of  mankind.” 

A  man,  Your  Excellency,  is  neither  a  pessimist 
nor  an  alarmist  merely  because  he  tries  correctly  to 
read  the  Census  Report.  But,  if  he  does  read  it 
correctly  it  is  difficult  to  keep  him  from  becoming 
both.  Unfortunately  in  order  to  impress  us,  statis¬ 
tics  have  to  be  written  in  blood.  When  we  see  all 
“the  pooled  intelligence  of  the  planet”  rushing  to 
its  death  on  the  battle-field  we  are  bowed  down  with 
the  sheer  awe  and  terror  of  the  spectacle.  But  when 
we  find  our  intelligence  vanishing,  from  the  fact  that 
ten  or  twenty  million  babies  from  our  better  stocks 
failed  to  get  born  within  the  past  generation, 
largely  from  economic,  educational  and  political 
conditions,  it  merely  causes  a  shrug  of  the  national 
shoulders. 

We  lack  imagination.  We  fail  to  see  the  de¬ 
pleted  ranks  of  our  leaders  that  stretch  away  to 
guide  the  coming  generations — that  “thin  red  line” 

174 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OE  SCIENCE 


tipped  with  genius  which  is  ever  growing  thinner, 
and  which  is  all  that  ever  stands  between  any  na¬ 
tion  and  its  doom.  We  fail  to  picture  our  republic’s 
future  without  its  Adamses,  Edwardses,  Lees,  Low¬ 
ells,  Randolphs,  Perrys  and  the  few  thousands,  not 
millions  of  truly  First  Families  whose  souls  gleam 
with  genius  and  glory  from  every  page  of  our  na¬ 
tional  history.  They  are  a  dying  race.  And  neither 
biologist  nor  statistician  can  easily  discover  their 
like  among  the  inferior  hordes  that  are  bound  to 
be  left  by  such  tragic  birth  rates  as  these. 

True,  the  average  man  laughs  at  statistics  even 
when  they  tell  the  truth.  But  all  nations  have  gone 
laughing  to  their  doom.  True,  also,  there  may  be 
counter-tendencies  and  biological  hopes.  I  think 
there  are.  But  they  have  to  be  sought  for  with 
prayer  and  statistics.  A  generation  ago  they  were 
the  outstanding  biological  features  of  our  national 
life. 

May  I,  with  a  view  of  enlightening  us  both,  ask 
Your  Excellency  a  few  possibly  embarrassing  ques¬ 
tions  ? 

Do  you  know  that  there  will  never  be  more  than 
just  about  one  hundred  ninety-seven  million  peoyde 
in  the  United  States'?  The  credit  for  this  brilliant 
demonstration  belongs  to  Dr.  Raymond  Pearl  of 
The  Johns  Hopkins  University.  This  number  wall 
be  reached  by  the  year  2100 — a  short  one  hundred 
eighty  years  from  now .  Persons  already  born  wall 
have  grandchildren  who  will  see  that  day  arrive. 

Do  you  know  that  the  American  problem,  to-day, 

Irr  K 

to 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


now ,  is  what  sort  of  people  will  that  race  of  one 
hundred  ninety-seven  million  he? 

Do  you  know  that  your  policies  begun  now  will 
largely  determine  whether  they  will  be  a  healthy 
race,  rich  in  mental  and  intellectual  vigor,  or  a 
squirming,  spawning  mass  of  incompetents,  without 
culture  or  leadership  ? 

Do  you  know  that  practically  four  babies  must 
be  born  to  every  married  couple  who  have  any 
children  at  all  in  order  to  keep  the  race  from  going 
backward  ? 

Do  you  know  that  one-fourth  of  each  generation 
(which  is  about  one- eighth  of  all  people  born)  pro¬ 
duces  one-half  of  the  next.  In  the  next  generation 
this  half  produces  approximately  three-fourths  and 
the  next  generation  nearly  ninety-eight  per  cent,  so 
that  the  quality  of  your  original  one-fourth,  wheth¬ 
er  high  or  low  very  soon  determines  absolutely  the 
quality  of  the  whole? 

Do  you  know  that  the  basic  problem  of  all  poli¬ 
tics  is,  where  is  that  one-fourth  to-day?  Are  they 
the  teachers,  lawyers,  doctors,  merchants,  scientists, 
statesmen  and  skilled  workmen,  or  are  they  the 
thoughtless  and  uncreative  without  skill  in  their 
hands  or  imagination  in  their  brains  ? 

Do  you  know  that  birth  control  is  the  most  mo¬ 
mentous  fact  in  the  history  of  mankind;  that  if 
wisely  used  to  increase  the  birth  rate  of  the  super¬ 
iors  it  is  the  most  effective  instrument  for  race  im¬ 
provement  within  the  power  of  man,  but  if  wrongly 
used  to  decrease  the  superiors,  while  the  inferiors 

176 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


continue  to  breed  with  undiminished  vigor,  it  will 
wreck  the  race  that  tries  it? 

Do  you  know  that  if  your  political,  educational 
and  economic  conditions  permit  it,  birth  control  will 
cause  the  patriotic,  the  prudent,  the  fatherly  and 
motherly,  those  endowed  by  nature  with  rich,  un¬ 
selfish  instincts,  to  beget  the  majority  of  the  na¬ 
tion’s  children,  causing  an  increase  of  morals,  in¬ 
telligence,  beauty,  unselfishness  and  all  that  make 
a  sound  foundation  for  a  great  human  breed;  but 
that  so  far  your  social  and  economic  forces  have 
pushed  these  most  precious  of  all  racial  strains  to 
the  biological  wall? 

Do  you  know  that  nothing  can  possibly  improve 
the  condition  of  the  poor  like  decreasing  their  num¬ 
bers  through  an  extension  among  them  of  birth- 
limitation  ? 

Do  you  know  that  while  one  million  country-born 
people  produce  one  hundred  leaders,  one  million  city- 
born  people  will  produce  nearly  two  hundred  fifty 
leaders ;  that  all  studies  indicate  that  cities  suck  up 
the  richest  blood  of  the  country  and  sterilize  it  in 
the  fires  of  city  ambition,  until  in  time  the  blood  of 
leadership  is  left  in  neither  city  nor  country  and, 
when  leadership  vanishes,  civilization  goes  with  it? 

Do  you  know  that  democracy  is  at  the  cross¬ 
roads  and  must  cease  to  be  regarded  as  a  revealed 
religion  and  become  an  object  of  critical  study;  that 
its  final  test  will  be  its  capacity  to  breed  an  increas¬ 
ing  supply  of  leaders;  that  if  it  fails  in  this,  both 
democracy  and  civilization  will  soon  become  what 

177 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Earl  Balfour  said  of  the  human  race,  “a  brief  and 
transitory  episode  in  the  life  of  one  of  the  meanest 
planets  ?  ’  ’ 

Here  then,  at  last,  biology  has  furnished  states¬ 
manship  with  a  fool-proof  chart  of  many  of  the  in¬ 
nermost  processes  of  national  life.  To  put  it  plain¬ 
ly  we  “can  see  our  finish.’ ’  For  the  first  time  in 
history  a  statesman  knows  the  following  facts: 

First,  he  knows  how  many  people  there  are  go¬ 
ing  to  be. 

Second,  he  knows  how  they  reproduce. 

Third,  he  knows  that  physical,  mental  and  moral 
qualities  are  all  inherited  with  equal  intensity. 

Fourth,  he  knows  that  the  section  which  pro¬ 
duces  the  most  children  will  in  an  incredibly  short 
time  absolutely  determine  the  physical,  mental  and 
moral  quality  of  the  whole. 

Fifth,  he  knows  that  the  results  of  education  are 
not  to  any  appreciable  degree  transmitted  from 
one  generation  to  the  nest  in  the  blood,  and  that 
therefore  nothing  can  improve  the  race  except  selec¬ 
tion  of  the  fitter  for  parentage. 

Sixth,  he  knows  that  the  man  who  is  left,  by  this 
new  instrument,  birth  control,  and  other  selective 
factors,  will  be  the  only  man  whose  physical,  men¬ 
tal  and  moral  character  will  be  passed  to  the  citi¬ 
zens  of  to-morrow. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  once  more  turn  our  eyes 
upon  this  all-important  individual — the  man  who  is 
left,  to  hand  the  torch  of  heredity  to  the  children 
yet  to  be,  and  see  who  he  is  likely  to  be  in  America 
if  things  go  on  without  a  change. 

178 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


There  were  one  hundred  two  Pilgrims  who 
came  over  in  the  Mayfloiver  and  landed  on  that  first 
Thanksgiving  Day  at  Plymouth  Pock.  No  finer 
stock  to  found  a  great  national  breed  of  men  and 
women  ever  set  out  to  sea.  I  have  the  names  of  all 
of  them  lying  here  on  my  desk  as  I  write.  More 
than  half  of  them  died  within  the  next  few  months, 
Only  twenty-three  are  known,  according  to  this 
statement,  to  have  left  descendants.  But  what 
descendants !  Let  us  read  off  just  a  few  at  random. 
John  Adams,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  James  A.  Garfield,  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Levi 
P.  Morton,  Elihu  Boot,  Chief  Justice  Taft,  Presi¬ 
dent  Zachary  Taylor,  Daniel  Webster,  General 
Leonard  Wood,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Henry 
Wadsworth  Longfellow,  William  Cullen  Bryant, 
Frank  Munsey,  Percy  MacKaye,  Winston  Churchill. 
It  was  eight  generations  ago  that  they  landed.  They 
later  expanded  to  many  thousands.  But  civilization 
is  conquering  its  creators.  Competent  students  have 
shown  that,  at  their  present  birth  rate,  within 
another  eight  generations  all  their  living  descend¬ 
ants  could  be  put  into  another  vessel  the  size  of  the 
Mayfloiver  and  sent  back  home ! 

It  would  probably  require  the  entire  American 
and  British  merchant  marine  to  transport  the  fur¬ 
niture  that  “came  over”  in  that  remarkable  vessel, 
yet  a  tiny  boat  of  the  same  size  would  carry  all  its 
living  descendants.  Pity  indeed  that  such  paltry 
things  as  chests  and  sideboards  would  last  longer 
than  the  priceless  blood  of  the  people. 

179 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

If  we  turn  to  a  study  of  any  section  of  the  des¬ 
cendants  of  the  old  foundation  stocks  such  as  the 
Daughters  of  the  Revolution,  the  Colonial  Dames 
and  the  like,  we  find  the  same  tendencies  laying  up¬ 
on  them  the  hand  of  racial  death. 

Mr.  Frederick  S.  Crum,  as  quoted  in  Popenoe 
and  Johnson’s  Applied  Eugenics  studied  the  gene- 
ology  of  12,722  New  England  wives  of  the  old  Col¬ 
onial  stocks.  In  one  hundred  twenty  years  their 
blood  has  been  vanishing  from  the  racial  stream  as 
follows : 


1750-1799  children  per  family . 6.43 

1800-1849  “  “  “  4.94 

1850-1869  “  “  4  4  3.47 

1870-1879  “  “  “  2.77 


“ There,”  as  these  authors  remark,  “in  four 
lines  is  the  story  of  the  decline  of  the  old  American 
stock.”  The  Census  Report  adds  its  impressive 
testimony.  In  1800,  for  every  one  thousand  women, 
there  were  976  children  under  five  years  of  age. 
These  were  all  of  the  old  strains.  In  1920,  for  all 
stocks,  old  and  new  combined,  the  number  of  child¬ 
ren  had  dropped  to  476,  a  decline  of  500  children  per 
1000  women  in  120  years !  This  would  be  no  racial 
disaster  were  it  not  that  the  decline  has  nearly  all 
taken  place  in  the  better  endowed  sections  of  the 
community. 

Faced  with  this  array  of  staggering  circum¬ 
stances,  and  they  could  be  multiplied  a  hundredfold, 
you  may  ask  anxiously,  “Watchman,  what  of  the 

180 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

night?  Is  there  no  happier  dawn  ahead ?”  I  think 
there  is.  There  is  no  biological  cloud  without  its 
silver  lining.  Above  all,  the  hope  of  the  scientists 
is  that,  as  never  before,  science  has  placed  man’s 
destiny  in  his  owtl  hands.  I  can  not  in  a  paragraph 
outline  a  new  social  psychology  nor  a  new  biological 
basis  of  politics.  But  the  encouraging  thing  is  that 
these  new  bases,  these  new  norms  of  social  action, 
these  new  ways  and  means  of  social  control  are 
here .  In  the  very  method  of  its  discovery  of  our 
staggering  dangers  science  has  given  man  the 
means  and  method  by  which  those  dangers  may  be 
escaped,  aye  indeed  turned  into  channels  of  prog¬ 
ress.  And,  even  at  the  worst,  to  men  and  women  of 
courage,  no  goal  is  ever  open  except  the  highest. 

First,  the  highest  message  of  biology — the  sci¬ 
ence  of  life — is  that  notwithstanding  their  terrify¬ 
ing  dangers,  human  sympathy,  social  tenderness, 
protection  of  the  -weak  and  meek  and  lowly,  special 
education  for  the  feeble-minded  and  uncontrolled, 
medicine,  hygiene  and  social  uplift  must  not  only  go 
on  but  be  multiplied  many  fold.  They  are  the  very 
evidences  of  civilization.  Man’s  heart  and  not  his 
head  is  the  finest  product  of  evolution.  But  im¬ 
pulsive  sympathy  must  be  linked  with  the  higher, 
deeper,  wider,  indeed,  protoplasmic  sympathy  of 
science.  Instinct  must  be  subjected  to  reason  or 
man’s  heart  will  burst  his  head.  Social  betterment 
must  work  with  race  betterment  or  both  will  fall 
into  the  ditch.  A  race  that  will  not  respond  to  hy¬ 
gienics  will  never  respond  to  eugenics.  A  race  that 

181 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


will  not  care  for  the  cripple  before  its  eyes  will  care 
nothing  for  the  cripple  in  the  unseen  future.  The 
inferiors  must  be  saved  for  everything  but  repro¬ 
duction;  the  superiors  must  save  themselves  basi¬ 
cally  and  biologically  with  this  end  in  view. 

Second,  science  must  go  on  until,  through  cheap¬ 
er  transportation,  cheaper  food  and  goods,  human¬ 
ized  industry,  saner  social  and  political  ideals  have 
restored  the  old  family  homestead,  the  family 
loyalty  and  solidarity,  which  have  been  the  biologi¬ 
cal  and  psychological  sources  of  every  great 
national  advance.  The  break-up  of  the  old 
American  homestead — and  the  same  is  true  in 
other  lands — combined  with  the  rush  to  the  cities 
and  mad  scramble  for  the  lavish  prizes  of  science; 
the  building  of  a  vast  industrial  civilization  in 
which  the  individual  is  lost  and  which  thwarts  many 
of  man’s  oldest  and  deepest  instincts  are  at  the  bot¬ 
tom  of  nearly  all  the  trouble.  They  have  bred  a 
sterilizing  national  psychology.  We  have  become  a 
nation  of  city-dwellers  and  gold-diggers.  The 
“flapper”  has  replaced  the  mother  as  the  national 
idol.  The  wedding  ring  has  become  a  mere  tempor¬ 
ary  ornament.  My  wife  just  hands  me  the  follow¬ 
ing  from  the  morning  paper : 

“A  former  Follies  beauty,  widow  of  a  wealthy 
publisher,  married  again  to  a  picture  star,  being 
sued  by  the  wife  of  a  business  man  on  the  charge  of 
alienating  his  affections,  is  engaged  to  marry  an 
actor  as  soon  as  the  courts  call  off  her  second  mar¬ 
riage,  and  the  actor’s  second  wife  divorces  him, 

182 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


while  her  husband,  a  picture  star,  who  married  her 
after  his  divorce  from  a  famous  model,  is  reported 
engaged  to  a  vaudeville  headliner,  whom  he  will 
marry  as  soon  as  she  divorces  her  husband,  a  brok¬ 
er  who  divorced  a  society  girl  to  elope  with  her.” 

It  would  certainly  be  a  wise  child — should  there 
be  one — who  could  identify  his  own  father  or  moth¬ 
er  out  of  such  a  mess  of  bio-sociological  pottage. 

However,  with  all  that,  people  are  not  worse 
than  they  were.  I  think  they  are  better.  But  when 
man  moves  from  his  old  home  on  the  land  into  city 
apartments,  flats  and  boarding-houses,  and  his 
farm  or  little  shop  is  transformed  into  vast  fac¬ 
tories  and  department  stores,  he  moves  into  a  new 
psychology.  His  most  imperious  instincts  are  de¬ 
nied.  Old  loyalties  are  lost.  Civic  virtues  die  in 
apartment-houses.  True  patriotism  decays.  Men 
can’t  be  loyal  to  a  smokestack.  They  will  not  go  out 
and  shed  their  blood  on  the  battle-field  in  defense  of 
a  boarding-house.  It  takes  room  to  raise  either 
morals  or  children.  A  genius  has  been  described 
as  a  man  who  could  devise  some  way  to  raise  chick¬ 
ens  in  a  flat.  A  still  greater  genius  would  be  the 
man  who  could  raise  character  or  children  in  one. 

Third,  in  spite  of  all  this,  I  am  convinced  that  a 
change  is  coming  in  our  national  psychology.  In - 
dustry  is  tending  toward  humanization ,  and  not 
away  from  it .  Cheaper  transportation  and  more 
dependable  if  not  cheaper  food  supply  are  rapidly 
building  up  suburbs  about  all  our  cities,  where  the 
patriotic,  home-loving,  child-loving,  unselfish  types 

183 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


of  people  are  once  more  founding  homesteads, 
where  all  the  glorious  clan  and  family  loyalties  are 
rapidly  blooming  again.  I  have  found  from  ex¬ 
tended  observation  that  in  these  suburban  towns, 
motherhood  is  distinctly  coming  into  fashion.  Wom¬ 
an’s  freedom  is  not  destroying  but  fostering  it.  And 
best  of  all,  it  is  setting  up  a  new  selection  since  par¬ 
enthood  is  voluntary  for  the  first  time  in  evolution¬ 
ary  history.  The  Bohemian,  the  self-seeking,  the 
merely  intellectual,  can  well  hang  themselves  in  the 
cities  by  their  own  ropes.  Many  fine  stocks  are  un¬ 
fortunately  still  perishing.  But  the  movement,  I 
think,  is  already  up,  and  not  down .  And  since  par¬ 
enthood  is  voluntary,  if  you  create  economic  con¬ 
ditions  that  make  parenthood  possible  to  our  best 
working  people  and  sounder  middle  classes,  and 
when  motherhood  becomes  the  national  fashion,  the 
style,  the  mode,  and  is  not  penalized  and  discredited, 
the  racial  destiny  is  safe — the  problem  of  eugenics 
is  largely  solved. 

Lastly,  the  world  is  bleeding  but  undaunted,  and 
there  are  still  millions  of  good  people.  Just  before 
his  death  the  late  John  Fiske  gave  us,  I  think,  the 
most  eloquent  sentence  in  the  literature  of  science. 
“The  consummate  product,”  said  he,  “of  a  world 
of  evolution  is  a  character  which  creates  happiness, 
replete  within  itself  with  divine  possibilities  of 
ever  fresh  life  and  ever  larger  joy,  fulfilling  truth 
and  beauty  in  directions  forever  new.” 

To  the  youth  of  this  land,  Your  Excellency,  is  thus 
given  an  immortal  privilege — the  privilege  to  toil 

184 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

together  in  the  lofty  partnership  of  man  and  woman 
toward  a  race  whose  character  will  create  happi¬ 
ness,  a  new  well-born,  inborn  happiness  of  health, 
energy  and  sanity,  for  every  man,  woman  and  little 
child ;  a  character  teeming  with  luxurious  potencies 
of  ever-fresh  life  and  larger  joy;  a  character  which 
will  fulfill  truth  and  beauty  in  divine  directions  and 
to  god-like  purposes  forever  new. 

Whether  they  will  do  this  or  can  do  it  I  do  not 
know.  Whether  men  and  women  have  the  social  co¬ 
herence,  the  economic  motivation,  the  educational 
ardor  and  the  political  capacity  to  do  it  I  do  not 
know.  I  believe  they  have.  But  I  do  know  that  be¬ 
yond  the  horizon  lie  just  two  things.  America  must 
choose  between  them  and  choose  while  it  is  yet 
called  to-day. 

One  is  slow  race-improvement  through  the  de¬ 
crease  of  the  badly-born  and  the  increase  of  the 
well-born;  the  other  is  Armageddon. 


THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Trusting  Intelligence 

The  seventh  commandment  of  science  is  the 
duty  of  trusting  intelligence . 

In  one  of  the  many  thousands  of  volumes  about 
life  which  statesmanship  has  neglected  or  rejected, 
there  is  preserved  the  remark  of  an  ancient  Hebrew 
statesman,  who,  it  seems  to  me,  stood  closer  to  the 
Lord  than  have  many  of  his  successors.  His  name 
was  David,  the  greatest  of  Jewish  kings.  “ I  have 
been  young,”  said  this  thoughtful  man,  “and  now 
am  old ;  and  yet  have  I  not  seen  the  righteous  for¬ 
saken,  nor  his  seed  begging  bread.” 

If  this  be  a  true  picture  of  the  social,  economic 
and  political  situation  of  men  lit  King  David’s 
country,  it  should  become  the  model  for  every  state. 
The  Great  Society  will  find  here  its  true  biological 
as  well  as  political  ideal.  The  good  man  survived 
and  the  bad  man  perished.  This  is  the  only  sound 
bio-social  osmosis.  The  right  man  in  such  a  country 
is  exalted  and  the  wrong  man  is  not  puffed  up.  A 
man’s  income,  either  in  money  or  social  and  political 
rewards,  is  apportioned  to  his  social  worth.  His 
social  and  biological  worth  at  least  keep  sight  of 
each  other.  They  are  both  reckoned  in  the  same 
coin. 


186 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

After  radicalism,  socialism,  bolshevism,  democ¬ 
racy,  autocracy,  anarchy  and  every  other  nostrum, 
each  shall  have  contributed  its  share  to  the  group 
life  of  man,  this  pronouncement  of  David  will  remain 
as  the  basis  of  all  sound  bio-political  philosophy. 

Upon  this  basic  rubric,  scientist,  educator  and 
statesman  can  all  unite  to  rear  a  state  where  it  pays 
to  be  good,  and  there  is  money  in  righteousness; 
where  brains  are  worth  having  and  intelligence  is 
more  effective  than  stupidity;  where  sweetness 
does  not  starve  and  light  pays  its  own  way;  where 
superiority  is  discerned  and  gentility  of  soul  re¬ 
warded;  where  the  prize  fighter  is  not  kept  in  such 
luxury  that  genius  can  not  even  afford  to  see  him 
fight;  where  the  dreamer  is  understood  and  the 
prophet  not  stoned;  where  the  children  of  light  can 
earn  more  money  than  the  children  of  darkness; 
where  wisdom  is  actually  more  precious  on  the  ex¬ 
change  than  rubies,  and  fineness  of  nature,  than 
much  fine  gold. 

In  brief,  no  state  can  remain  permanently  upon 
the  world  stage  where  virtue  is  not  given  survival 
value  and  intelligence  not  accorded  the  same  honor 
that  it  had  in  the  jungle.  Not  mere  physical 
strength,  nor  loudness  of  voice,  nor  fierceness  of 
mien,  but  4 ‘the  better  angels  of  our  nature”  is  the 
finest  thing  evolution  has  drawn  from  its  sea  of 
blood.  But  you  actually  teach  men  to  fear  and  de¬ 
spise  intelligence  and  nobility,  and  let  their  children 
at  least  rustle  for  themselves. 

^Wken  you  conferred  political  power  upon 

187 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


masses  of  men  scarcely  two  hundred  years  out  of 
serfdom  and  barbarism,  you  failed  to  teach  them  to 
reverence  greatness  of  intellect  and  richness  of 
spirit.  They  are  actually  afraid  of  such  things. 
For  nearly  a  generation  it  has  been  little  short  of  a 
national  joke  in  America  that  one  of  its  United 
States  senators  was  a  “scholar  in  politics.’ ’  As 
though  education  actually  injured  a  man  for  the 
profession  of  statecraft!  It  may  have  injured  this 
particular  individual  through  the  fact  that  it  was 
largely  the  scholarship  of  a  bygone  age,  but  educa¬ 
tion  usually  results  in  improvement  even  in  states¬ 
manship.  This  may  not  have  been  true  when  club 
and  spear  and  personal  craftiness  were  not  only  the 
sole  weapons,  but  the  sole  needs  of  effective  gov¬ 
ernment.  But  in  a  scientific  age,  when  government 
is  not  merely  the  problem  of  the  location  of  power, 
but  of  the  administration  of  human  service,  politics 
should  become  the  most  technical  of  all  the  arts  and 
professions. 

It  has  hardly,  however,  become  so.  The  state  of 
Minnesota  recently  elected  a  United  States  senator, 
presumably  its  ablest  political  genius,  highly 
trained  in  all  the  intricate  machinerv  of  national 

9/ 

and  international  administration,  deeply  versed  in 
social  and  political  theory  and  history,  skilled  in  all 
the  latest  methods  of  psychological,  biological  and 
statistical  approach  to  social  problems.  It  is  some¬ 
what  disconcerting  to  learn  that  this  amiable  gentle¬ 
man  has  received  his  training  for  this  highly  per¬ 
plexing  situation  by  managing  a  small  farm,  and 

188 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  he  can  scarcely  speak  the  English  language. 
This,  however,  seems  to  be  amply  compensated  for 
by  the  fact  that  he  speaks  it  in  “an  extraordinarily 
loud  voice  that  will  shake  the  dome  of  the  capitol.  ’  ’ 
However,  he  is  said  to  “believe  in  the  plain  pepul,” 
higher  prices  for  farm  products,  and  hates  Wall 
Street.  What  more  could  be  asked?  How  to  secure 
high  prices  for  the  plain  people  has  for  generations 
taxed  all  the  genius  of  economists.  Since  intelli¬ 
gent  study  has  not  altogether  solved  the  problem 
perhaps  it  is  best  to  try  just  plain  ignorance.  If 
Minnesota  admires  and  trusts  that  type  of  political 
intelligence,  it  is  highly  probable  that  that  is  about 
the  size  and  type  of  political  intelligence  that  Min¬ 
nesota  would  admire  and  trust.  By  a  vote  of  four 
to  one  New  York  City  recently  re-elected  a  mayor 
to  conduct  affairs  almost  as  vast  as  those  of  the 
Boman  Empire,  but  enormously  more  technical, 
who  had  amply  demonstrated  his  right  to  the  title 
“Honest  John,”  even  though  the  title  was  not  ac¬ 
companied  by  the  words  “ Intelligent ’ ’  or  “Wise.” 
If  intelligent  government  can  be  got  from  such 
“democracy”  then  miracles  are  a  common  occur¬ 
rence;  by  using  the  right  conjuring  word,  such  as 
“brotherhood”  or  “hundred  per  cent.  American¬ 
ism”  men  can  gather  grapes  from  thorns  and  figs 
from  thistles. 

When  a  scientist  attacks  a  problem,  he  first  de¬ 
vises  appropriate  means  for  calculating  his  own 
“probable  error.”  To  calculate  the  probable  error 
of  this  kind  of  statesmanship  would  require  omnis¬ 


cience. 


189 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Even  if  our  scientists  create  for  you,  as  they 
have,  a  great  civilization,  and  then  succeed  in  meas¬ 
uring  the  intelligence  and  good  will  which  men  pos¬ 
sess  for  conducting  it,  it  is  all  futile  if  you  do  not 
trust  this  intelligence  and  good  will  with  power  and 
influence.  But  instead  of  teaching  men  to  look  up  to 
intelligence  you  teach  them  belief  in  magic  on  the 
one  hand,  and  that  slogans  and  words  are  social  solu¬ 
tions  on  the  other.  This  is  a  sloganized  age,  an  age 
of  searching — by  statesmen  at  least — not  for  solu¬ 
tions  of  social  problems  but  for  what  Professor 
James  called  “solving  words.”  Democracy,  Prog¬ 
ress,  Brotherhood,  Communism,  Uplift,  Humanity, 
are  not  solutions  for  anything,  but  mere  solving 
words.  J ames  says,  they  act  in  politics,  as  the  word 
“God”  acts  in  religion.  Just  so  a  man  believes  in 
God,  he  is  on  the  road  to  salvation  without  ref¬ 
erence  to  his  achieved  spiritual  values  or  inner  ex¬ 
perience.  And  just  so  a  thing  is  democratic  or 
progressive  without  any  reference  to  where  it 
may  progress  toward  it  must  be  right.  It  has  ex¬ 
actly  the  right  name.  As  James  points  out,  Solomon 
could  control  the  evil  spirits  because  he  knew  the 
right  names  of  all  of  them.  Address  an  evil  spirit 
by  the  right  name  and  you’ve  got  him.  And  this 
age  is  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  social  evils  will 
yield  to  the  same  treatment. 

If  a  “democratic”  remedy  fails  to  cure  anything 
it  is  proof,  not  that  it  is  the  wrong  remedy,  but  that 
it  is  not  democratic  enough.  Pour  in  a  little  “more 
democracy!”  To  calculate,  to  measure,  to  analyze 

190 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  psychology  of  human  motives,  to  add  up  col¬ 
umns  of  figures,  to  calculate  standard  deviations 
and  coefficients  of  correlation, — this  requires  hard 
work  and  intelligence.  It  requires  intellectual  men. 
It  requires  men  who  want  to  solve  things  instead  of 
finding  solving  words  for  them.  The  masses  have 
no  use  for  such  methods  or  such  men.  “Give  us  the 
plain  facts/  9  they  exclaim,  meaning  that  this  is  the 
last  thing  on  earth  they  do  want. 

Just  at  this  moment  the  latest  number  of  The 
Journal  of  Applied  Psychology  reaches  my  desk. 
I  note  that  Prof.  Donald  G.  Patterson,  of  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Minnesota,  has  examined  a  group  of  stud¬ 
ents  who  had  got  far  enough  to  take  up  the  tech¬ 
nical  study  of  applied  psychology.  It  is  somewhat 
appalling  to  learn  that  a  significant  percentage  of 
these  cultivated  youths  believed  in  the  following: 
astrology,  chiropractic,  fortune-telling,  graphol¬ 
ogy,  hypnotism,  memory  systems,  mental  telepathy, 
spiritualism,  phrenology,  physiognomy  and  absent 
treatment.  This  may  throw  a  light  on  the  election 
of  the  aforesaid  senator  from  Minnesota.  If  col¬ 
lege  students  believe  thus  in  a  magical  world,  it  is  a 
matter  of  wonder  what  the  masses  believe.  Professor 
Thorndike  found  that  among  the  upper  one  or  two 
per  cent,  of  the  American  population  about  one  in 
four  does  not  know  “whether  the  Ten  Command¬ 
ments  are  called  the  decagon,  or  the  Decalogue,  or 
the  decament  or  the  decemvirate.”  It  would  be  in¬ 
teresting  to  find  how  many  know  whether  or  not 
Moses  wrote  the  Decameron. 

191 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


But  the  faith  in  solving  words  in  the  place  of 
hard- won  solutions  reigns  supreme  over  this  age. 
There  never  were  so  many  problems,  so  many  solv¬ 
ing  words,  nor  so  many  people  who  believed  in  them. 
Yet  they  never  have  solved  anything.  Nothing  but 
intelligence  and  good  will,  usually  extended  over 
long  periods  of  time,  ever  solved  any  social  prob¬ 
lem.  The  notion  that  the  4 ‘cure  for  the  ills  of  de¬ 
mocracy  is  more  democracy’ ’  is  on  a  par  with  the 
popular  belief  that  aspirin  or  calomel  or  some  phar¬ 
maceutical  whatnot  is  “good  for  whatever  is  the 
matter  with  you.  ’  ’  Graveyards  are  filled  with  pre¬ 
maturely  deliquesced  citizens  who  held  these  pious 
beliefs. 

Everywhere  we  turn,  we  find  that  both  you  and 
the  masses  to  whom  you  have  given  power,  distrust 
intelligence.  The  famous  or  infamous  Lusk  Com¬ 
mittee  of  New  York,  in  the  name  of  sound  states¬ 
manship,  solemnly  announced  that  one  of  the  chief 
duties  of  the  state  is  “to  protect  its  citizens  from 
dangerous  political  doctrines.”  The  state  thus  con¬ 
stitutes  itself  the  chief  bulwark  against  its  own 
progress.  Who  is  to  be  the  judge  of  “dangerous 
political  doctrines”!  What  are  “dangerous  politi¬ 
cal  doctrines”!  Anything  that  threatens  the  status 
quo.  Anything  that  threatens  to  improve  things. 
Anything  that  threatens  to  put  the  ins  out  and  get 
the  outs  in.  Anything  that  means  a  free  open  dis¬ 
cussion  of  economic,  social  and  political  problems. 

In  this  line  nothing  is  more  refreshing  than  the 
recent  motion  in  the  British  House  of  Commons 

192 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  Great  Britain  should  resolve  itself  into  a  so¬ 
cialistic  commonwealth.  This  is  getting  some¬ 
where  in  genuine  statesmanship.  I  should  instantly 
take  the  opposing  side;  but  let  us  talk  the  matter 
over.  Let  us  find,  first,  what  is;  second,  if  we 
ought  to  go  somewhere,  third,  where  we  ought  to 
go,  and,  fourth,  whether  we  have  the  means  to  go 
even  if  we  ought  to  go.  Something  will  turn  up  out 
of  the  talk.  We  may  find  the  status  quo  is  the  best 
quo  possible.  Very  well,  it  is  worth  while  to  be  re¬ 
assured.  Nothing,  Your  Excellency,  except  free  in¬ 
telligence,  will  ever  set  society  free. 

But  you  do  not  even  trust  the  intelligence  of 
your  youth.  Freeing  the  minds  of  youth  to  all  the 
inrush  of  the  new  age  is  our  only  hope  of  a  new  age 
of  the  spirit.  James  Harvey  Bobinson,  one  of  the 
wisest  men  aboard  with  us  to-day,  has  recently 
made  an  extended  examination  of  our  under-grad¬ 
uate  schools.  He  returns  to  say  that  “our  schools 
teach  everything  except  something  new.”  Nich¬ 
olas  Murray  Butler,  president  of  the  largest  college 
in  the  world,  assures  us  we  “must  get  back  to  Greek 
ideals.”  Why  not  get  forward  to  some  new  and  re¬ 
freshing  ideals  of  our  own?  The  Greeks  did,  why 
can  not  we  ?  They  did  it  by  teaching  their  youth  to 
think  without  the  fetters  of  the  past,  facing  with 
courage  and  gaiety  the  things  that  are.  Are  our 
youth  less  to  be  trusted? 

It  seems  so.  Take  up  any  school  text-book.  Ev¬ 
erything  has  to  be  taken  out  of  it  that  might  offend 
the  Catholics,  or  Jews,  or  Presbyterians,  the  North- 

193 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


erners  or  Southerners,  or  Democrats  or  Republi- 
cans  or  the  Irish.  After  this  purgation  there  isn’t 
much  left  worth  teaching.  Votes  must  be  had  at  all 
cost  for  another  election  is  coming  soon.  As  that 
astute  citizen,  Edwin  E.  Slosson,  Editor  of  Science 
Service ,  observes,  you  are  already  demanding  that 
we  teach  our  young  people  a  Baptist  zoology,  a 
Presbyterian  chemistry  and  a  Methodist  astron¬ 
omy.  One  young  man  studying  for  the  Catholic 
priesthood  told  me  he  was  “ studying  biology’’  and 
“had  got  as  far  as  St.  Thomas  Acquinas!”  Per¬ 
haps  in  a  century  or  two  he  will  get  to  Thomas 
Hunt  Morgan.  Why  not  use  the  present  as  a  free 
spring-board  into  the  future,  instead  of  a  diving 
point  into  the  past! 

“Education,”  according  to  Everett  Dean  Mar¬ 
tin,  “is  the  formation  of  those  mental  habits  which 
enable  an  individual  to  react  adequately  to  real  sit¬ 
uations."  Such  an  education  as  this,  he  says,  “gives 
a  man  a  control  of  facts.”  It  teaches  him  to  meet 
the  universe — to  take  it  into  friendly  partnership. 
If  men  ever  faced  real  situations  it  is  the  men  here 
with  us  now.  \A  return  to  the  Greeks,  rich  as  was 
their  humanism,  will  not  meet  the  real  situations 
of  a  civilization  they  never  dreamed  of.  As  John 
Dewey  shows,  the  very  content  of  men’s  life-ex¬ 
perience,  the  sort  of  a  universe  they  live  in  has 
changed.  We  no  longer  live  in  a  Greek  world  but 
an  American,  English,  French,  German,  Irish,  Rus¬ 
sian  world.  And  as  Martin  again  observes:  “Too 
much  of  our  education  is  still  moulding  men  to  type 
for  the  State’s  sake  instead  of  for  the  child’s  sake.” 

194 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

We  merely  make  them  high-class  trained  animals 
and  not  free-thinking  men.  You  are  afraid  to  trust 
children  with  the  real  secrets  of  life.  They  ought  to 
grow  up  thinking  freely  without  the  slightest  con¬ 
cern  as  to  whether  it  preserves  the  status  quo  or 
whether  it  might  upset  your  seat  and  spill  you  out. 
We  even  hear  that  laboring  men  are  clamoring  for 
‘ 4  labor  education  ; some  type  of  education  no 
doubt  that  cuts  out  anything  that  might  indicate 
that  capitalists  are  not  as  Balzac  said  ‘  ‘  all  viscera.  ’ ’ 
As  though  there  could  be  more  than  one  education, 
the  kind  that  teaches  men  to  meet  adequately  real 
situations. 

No,  you  do  not  follow  King  David’s  excellent 
statesmanship  in  honoring  righteousness  and  intel¬ 
ligence.  The  other  day  I  saw  twenty  thousand 
“fans”  frantically  applauding  a  “home  rim,”  and 
near  by  was  a  biological  laboratory  with  two  half 
starved  students  and  a  discouraged  professor  in  it. 
The  professor  told  me  he  had  labored  for  ten  years 
to  raise  fifty  thousand  dollars  to  promote  biological 
research  in  America  and  had  been  able  to  secure 
only  seventeen  hundred  dollars.  The  fans  yelling 
outside,  so  that  I  could  scarcely  hear  the  professor 
talk,  had  probably  contributed  half  the  desired  en¬ 
dowment  that  afternoon  to  find  out  whether  the 
Giants  or  White  Sox  were  the  more  expert  in  hit¬ 
ting  a  zigzagging  ball  with  a  stick.  Life  is  made  for 
baseball  as  well  as  biology,  but  the  money  and  hon¬ 
or  should  hardly  be  proportioned  between  the  two 
in  the  ratio  of  five  or  ten  thousand  to  one. 

Professor  James  thought  that  the  final  aim  of 

195 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


education  was  to  teach  us  to  know  a  good  man  when 
we  saw  one.  Your  average  “fan” — movie,  baseball 
or  political — neither  knows  a  good  man  nor  a  bad 
man  when  he  sees  him.  He  knows  a  good  movie  ac¬ 
tor  or  baseball  player  or  politician.  He  does  know 
a  good  trained  animal  when  he  sees  it.  But  I  am 
speaking  of  good  men.  He  appreciates  only  one 
kind  of  good  men — the  ones  with  money  in  their 
pockets.  A  hundred  years  of  popular  education 
has  taught  all  the  fans  to  read,  write  and  count 
money.  But  what  do  they  read,  what  do  they  write, 
what  do  they  spend  their  money  for? 

Every  fan  envies  your  automobile,  your  summer 
hotels  and  fine  soft  hat,  even  though  it  top  off  a  soft 
head.  He  can  not  see  a  much  greater  man  by  your 
side  who  has  no  change  in  his  pocket,  but  who  may 
have  a  deathless  poem  or  mathematical  demonstra¬ 
tion  in  his  head.  He  can  easily  distinguish  you  by 
your  loud  voice,  good  clothes  and  air  of  command ; 
but  he  can  not  tell  the  other  man  from  your  lackey, 
and  he  therefore  treats  him  the  same.  He  can  not 
understand  excellence  of  spirit,  although  you  have 
given  him  the  power  to  adjudge  excellence  and  pro 
rate  its  rewards. 

Do  you  doubt  this  ?  Lying  on  my  desk  are  three 
letters  from  city  school  superintendents  thrown  out 
of  their  positions  within  the  past  five  months  by 
public  vote  because  they  believed  that  all  men,  even 
Mr.  Bryan,  are  related  to  the  monkeys.  These 
school  men  were  all  trained  in  our  leading  univer¬ 
sities  as  to  what  is  wise  and  true  to  teach  our  youth. 

196 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


They  are  able,  religions,  brave  intelligent  men.  Yet 
one  writes  me,  “I  am  a  carpenter  and  will  have  to 
go  back  to  the  bench  to  get  bread  for  my  wife  and 
three  children.  ”  Some  centuries  ago  a  Carpenter 
who  did  some  teaching  on  the  side,  shook  a  good 
many  statesmen  from  their  seats.  Another  of  these 
men  writes,  “They  have  crucified  me.”  That  same 
cry  from  this  Teacher-Carpenter  nineteen  centuries 
ago  was  the  most  significant  thing  that  happened 
to  ancient  statesmanship.  The  Fundamentalists 
might  bring  about  the  same  result  again. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  Your  Excellency  that  in¬ 
telligent  men  might  call  to  one  another,  might  get 
together,  might  assume,  indeed  grasp,  your  power? 
If  your  political  philosophy  continues  to  lag  as  it 
does  a  century  behind  the  times  even  the  masses,  en¬ 
lightened  through  our  schools,  might  get  rid  of  you 
as  a  useless  expense.  They  came  nearly  doing  it 
during  the  war.  They  might  do  it  in  times  of  peace. 
It  is  not  altogether  a  fantastic  speculation  as  to 
whether  political  civilization  may  be  nearing  its 
end.  As  one  writer  has  suggested,  scientists  and 
teachers  may  become  kings. 

Men  might  be  so  educated  that  they  would  glad¬ 
ly  follow  that  intelligence  that  knew  how  to  create 
this  civilization.  Scientific  intelligence  did  create 
it  in  the  main.  Seeing  what  this  intelligence  has 
done  for  their  comfort,  wealth  and  pleasure  they 
might  conclude  to  turn  all  their  affairs  over  to  the 
men  who  possess  this  intelligence.  You  were  so 
helpless  during  the  war  that  you  had  to  call  on  the 

197 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


despised  “high-brow  professor’ ’  to  help  yon  manage 
the  machines  he  had  invented.  It  may  be  that  in 
time,  if  you  do  not  use  his  inventions  to  create  a  new 
humanism — a  new  science  of  society — and  guide  your 
conduct  by  new  values,  that  he  will  withhold  his 
chemicals,  explosives,  power  currents  and  the  like 
unless  you  also  give  him  control  of  them.  The 
scientists  may  go  on  a  general  strike !  If  they  did 
civilization  would  be  distraught  over  night  and  be 
starving  within  a  week.  Devolutions  as  great  as  this 
have  taken  place.  Industrial  and  political  democracy 
present  no  greater  shifts  in  social  control  than  would 
result  if  scientists  organized  to  manage  their  own 
creations,  and  made  business  men  and  politicians  their 
subordinate  officers.  I  think  myself  that  scientists 
have  not  yet  realized  what  their  organized  power 
might  do.  But,  beyond  question,  it  would  be  used 
for  human  benefit.  It  is  a  strange,  a  hopeful,  but, 
for  you,  a  portentous  reflection. 

But  all  such  reflections  are  idle  gestures  if  only 
you  will  keep  the  people  looking,  as  King  David  did, 
at  the  right  man.  As  I  have  so  often  said,  a  nation 
moves  biologically,  organically  toward  the  man  it 
is  taught  to  look  at,  the  man  it  admires  and  seeks  to 
imitate.  It  rewards  that  man,  gives  him  office, 
takes  care  of  his  children.  Its  young  women  seek 
that  type  of  man  in  marriage,  the  young  men  seek 
that  type  of  woman.  Their  very  children  look  like 
him,  act  like  him,  are  like  him.  The  man  a  nation  is 
taught  to  look  at  becomes  in  time  bred  into  the  very 
bone,  blood  and  sinew  of  the  race. 

198 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

Let  ns  ask :  What  kind  of  man  is  this  nation  look¬ 
ing  at  f  What  kind  of  man  does  it  admire  and  reward 
with  office?  You  are  shrewd  enough  to  set  up  high 
ideals  and  platforms,  but  the  wrong  man  is  given  the 
reward  of  carrying  them  out.  I  wonder  when  the 
people  will  learn,  as  some  New  York  preacher  put 
the  case,  that  “political  platforms  are  like  the 
platforms  on  a  railway  car — made  to  get  aboard 
with  but  not  to  ride  on.”  Certainly  the  political 
philosopher  grounded  in  bio-  and  psycho-sociology 
and  political  science  has  never  been  taken  aboard. 
He  does  not  arrogate  to  himself  all  the  righteous¬ 
ness  of  which  David  spoke,  but  he  has  a  fair  share 
of  it.  But  his  share  and  that  of  his  colleagues,  the 
poets,  dreamers  and  prophets— humanists  all — are 
not  recognized  in  distributing  the  rewards  of  money, 
power  and  honor.  Consequently  his  children  often 
beg  for  bread.  When  he  sees  the  palatial  homes 
you  provide  for  imbeciles  and  the  socially  inade¬ 
quate,  and  looks  at  his  own  humble  quarters  and  his 
inability  to  raise  even  half  as  many  children  as  the 
stupid  and  incompetent  do,  through  your  paternal 
care  and  his  expense,  he  wonders  if  it  were  not  a 
blessing  to  be  “bom  short.”  Mass  democracy 
teaches  men  to  look  at  the  wrong  man. 

You  have  scarcely  observed  one  of  the  most  stu¬ 
pendous  tragedies  to  government  that  has  come  out 
of  your  having  honored  unintelligence.  It  has 
changed  the  whole  character  and  dignity  of  Ameri¬ 
can  government.  In  his  Democracy  and  the  Human 
Equation ,  Mr.  Alleyne  Ireland  exhibits  .it  in  all  its 

199 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ghastly  certainty  and  nudity.  It  is  that  when,  by 
chance  and  the  Grace  of  God,  a  good  man  is  elected 
to  office,  the  people  have  become  so  used  to  unintel¬ 
ligence  that  they  can  not  tell  him  when  they  see 
him.  Consequently  they  immediately  load  him, 
bury  him,  snow  him  under,  with  resolutions,  tele¬ 
grams,  letters  telling  him  what  to  do  and  what  not 
to  do.  They  are  so  afraid  they  have  elected  a  man 
who  has  enough  judgment  to  use  it,  that  they  pro¬ 
ceed  to  rob  him  of  what  little  God  may  have  given 
him.  One-half  of  my  mail  is  made  up  of  frantic  ap¬ 
peals  from  obscure  individuals  and  unknown  socie¬ 
ties,  uttering  dire  national  disaster  if  I  do  not  carry 
out  their  instant  instructions:  Write  to  your  Con¬ 
gressman,  Telegraph  your  Senator,  Telephone  the 
Governor,  Go  see  the  Alderman,  Talk  to  the  Mayor, 
Badioplione  the  State  Legislature.  Sandbag  gov¬ 
ernment,  pure  and  simple !  If  every  citizen  is  equ¬ 
ally  honored  (or  pestered)  he  must  feel  that  the 
safety  of  the  republic  is  largely  in  his  hands.  Per¬ 
haps  it  all  does  minister  to  the  importance  of  being 
a  citizen  equipped  with  a  political  billy. 

We  are  urged  by  self-constituted  “  Security 
Leagues”  and  “ Guardians  of  Liberty”  to  “ bring 
the  weight  of  public  opinion”  upon  legislators 
whom  our  fathers  by  means  of  elaborate  constitu¬ 
tional  provisions  sought  to  preserve  from  such 
pressure.  They  expected  these  men  would  be  of  suf¬ 
ficient  weight  to  lead,  guide  and  create  public  opin¬ 
ion.  Unless  democracy  can  trust  its  aristocracy  it 
will  not  outlast  the  next  generation.  Practically  all 

200 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  democracy  the  world  ever  had  was  given  to  it 
by  its  high-minded  aristocrats.  What  few  reforms 
the  French  Revolution  made  were  already  in  mo¬ 
tion  under  the  guidance  of  the  old  aristocracy.  Dem¬ 
ocracy  can  not  go  it  alone  because  it  has  not  suf¬ 
ficient  leadership.  Aristocracy  fails  in  sickening 
cycles  of  regularity  when  it  loses  the  pressure  of 
democracy  to  hold  it  to  responsibility.  This  world 
and  human  nature  were  not  made  for  either  one 
exclusively.  Our  fathers  founded  an  aristo-republi- 
can  machinery  designed  to  carry  on  an  aristo-de- 
mocracy  of  the  people.  It  will  do  it  if  intelligence  is 
continually  called  to  the  colors,  and  trusted  when 
called.  If  aristo-democracy  will  not  work,  then 
nothing  will  work.  Government  itself  is  a  failure 
and  nothing  is  left  but  anarchy.  Even  anarchy  is  a 
noble  philosophical  conception,  but  meant  only  for 
gods  and  mollusks.  Mollusks  without  backbone, 
and  gods  without  temperament  might  make  a  go  of 
it.  But  human  nature  can  not,  any  more  than  it  can 
make  a  go  of  crass,  unmitigated  socialism. 

But,  this  whole  modern  paraphernalia,  worse 
than  that,  highly  organized,  often  secret  machinery 
of  propaganda,  is  expressly  designed  to  keep  intel¬ 
ligence  from  governing  us,  and  to  suppress  what 
little  intelligence  we  do  elect.  As  Ireland  says,  we 
have  delegates  instead  of  legislators.  We  should 
listen  to  Macaulay  who  thought  it  was  as  high  a 
misdemeanor  for  a  citizen  to  influence  the  vote  of  a 
legislator  as  to  bribe  a  jury.  No  wonder  our  ablest 
minds  and  most  generous  spirits  will  not  accept  the 

201 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


position  of  browbeaten  delegates  and  public  errand 
boys.  As  that  eminent  French  philosopher,  Faguet, 
argues,  our  whole  modern  democratic  machinery  is 
especially  devised  to  put  a  premium  not  upon  intel¬ 
ligence  but  upon  incompetency.  As  a  case  in  point 
Mr.  Herbert  Quick  shows  in  The  Hawkey  e — that 
remarkable  picture  of  our  institutional  stupidity — 
that  we  have  a  county  government  in  America  upon 
which  is  built  a  state  government  that  is  the  most 
ingenious  device  ever  invented  by  the  wit  of  man  to 
insure  political  inefficiency.  It  at  least  gives  us 
“ expense  regardless  of  pleasure”  or  political 
profit. 

The  biological  consequences  of  this  failure  to 
trust  intelligence  is  seen  only  when  we  reflect  again 
and  again,  as  I  have  so  often  done  in  these  pages, 
that  righteousness  and  intelligence  are  knit  togeth¬ 
er  in  the  very  psychological  and  physiological  fab¬ 
ric  of  mortal  make-up.  They  are  carried  together 
from  father  to  son  in  the  germ  cell.  This  being 
true,  if  righteousness  is  not  honored  as  in  King 
David’s  country  and  given  survival  value,  then  in¬ 
telligence  will  also  decline  in  the  very  hereditary 
blood  of  the  people.  And,  pari  passu ,  if  you  do 
not  keep  your  people  looking  at  the  man  of  high  in¬ 
telligence  and  political  capacity,  the  righteousness 
that  exalteth  a  nation  will  vanish  and  its  seed  beg 
for  bread.  It  is  a  vicious  biological  circle  which  you 
establish.  You  force  the  nation  to  drift  biologically 
toward  the  wrong  man  because  you  keep  them  look¬ 
ing  at  the  wrong  man. 

At  this  moment  the  postman  hands  me  a  letter 

202 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


from  one  of  the  foremost  living  biologists  stating 
that  he  has  solved  one  of  the  great  problems  of  evo¬ 
lution  and  hasn’t  money  enough  even  to  print  the 
news  and  send  to  his  fellow  biologists.  This  dis¬ 
covery,  I  happen  to  know,  may  change  the  whole 
outlook  of  man  upon  his  own  being  and  destiny. 
Yet  we  can’t  get  the  money  to  tell  men  about  it.  But 
let  a  congressman  stub  his  toe  and  the  very  air  is 
filled  with  the  news  of  the  dreadful  but  important 
catastrophe.  All  eyes  are  fixed  upon  this  unfor¬ 
tunate  man.  The  evening  paper  tells  of  some  young 
man,  who  a  few  months  since  was  a  bookkeeper  at 
thirty-five  dollars  a  week,  but  owing  to  his  capacity 
to  move  his  hands  and  feet  in  some  preposterous 
way  that  excites  rapturous  merriment  in  the  masses, 
a  motion  picture  concern  pays  him  three  million 
dollars  for  three  years’  work.  Perhaps  work  in¬ 
stead  of  art  is  the  correct  word.  The  motion  picture 
is  the  first  art  in  the  history  of  man  that  depends  for 
its  livelihood  solely  upon  the  masses.  It  is  the  first 
truly  democratic  art.  For  that  reason  it  can  never 
be  a  great  art.  But  it  can  be  an  enormously  service¬ 
able  art  and  will  be,  if  intelligently  directed, 
another  means  of  bringing  respect  for  beauty,  ex¬ 
cellence  and  intelligence  to  the  masses  of  unculti¬ 
vated  men.  It  can  not  create  these  values,  but  it 
can  turn  the  minds  of  the  commonest  men  toward 
them.  And  I  think  it  will. 

But  the  means  of  human  intercourse  are  now  so 
enormous  that  men  of  intelligence  are  bound  soon 
to  find  each  other  and  strike  hands  in  more  effec¬ 
tive  social  control.  And  when  they  do,  I  am  sure 

203 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  yon  will  be  among  them.  Your  hale  and  hearty 
good  will,  your  sagacious  common  sense,  and  your 
knowledge  of  the  mechanics  of  leadership  are  three 
of  the  most  valuable  assets  of  civilization.  They 
are  yours  by  right  of  birth.  I  am  only  pleading  that 
you  join  them  with  every  ounce  of  trained  and  in¬ 
spired  intelligence  we  have. 

If  you  will  only  do  this,  and  then  with  your  tre¬ 
mendous  personal  powers,  see  to  it  that  no  hand  but 
that  of  Truth  touches  our  public  school  and  college, 
that  no  Protestant,  Catholic,  Jew,  Gentile,  Old  Sol¬ 
dier,  Young  Soldier,  Laborite,  Capitalist,  Radical, 
Conservative,  Optimist,  Pessimist,  Democrat,  Re¬ 
publican  or  Mugwump  as  such ,  that  no  special 
interest  under  heaven  lays  its  blighting  hand 
upon  the  minds  of  our  youth,  but  that  only  the 
child  of  light  and  tolerance,  the  liberal,  the 
truth-seeker,  the  brave,  the  free — the  educator 
who  knows  no  passion  but  knowledge  and  beauty, 
no  goal  but  liberty,  shall  mold  their  character  and 
outlook,  then,  Your  Excellency,  the  world  can  and 
will  enter,  without  observation,  without  bombs  or 
blood,  into  a  truly  great  age  of  the  human  spirit. 

For  the  minds  of  a  generation  of  young  men  and 
women,  set  free  amid  a  great  heritage  of  humanism 
and  a  great  environment  of  science,  trained  to  meet 
adequately  the  real  situations  of  a  real  world,  and 
with  trust  in  intelligence  as  the  essence  of  national 
ethics,  the  test  of  national  culture  and  the  proof  of 
national  greatness — this  and  this  alone  is  the  guar¬ 
antee  that  society  shall  some  day  be  free. 

204 


THE  EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Aet 

The  eighth  commandment  of  science  to  states¬ 
manship  is  the  duty  of  art. 

Y  our  Excellency  may  imagine  that  art  should  be 
the  last  concern  of  the  biologist,  and  not  at  all  the 
concern  of  the  statesman.  It  should  be  one  of  the 
deepest  concerns  of  both.  For  the  biologist  is  engaged 
in  unmasking  the  causes  of  evolution,  and  you  are 
engaged,  either  consciously  or  unconsciously,  in  ap¬ 
plying  them.  And  art  is  the  herald  of  the  march 
of  evolution  itself.  Biology  has  suddenly  given  to 
art  a  new  and  incalculable  significance.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  very  face  and  form  of  civilized 
man  have  changed  under  its  influence,  because  art 
sets  up  new  ideals  in  marriage  selection.  And 
these  ideals  are  thus  transmitted  in  living  flesh 
and  blood  to  the  offspring.  Heretofore  art  has  been 
for  the  dreamer’s  joy.  It  must,  from  this  hour,  take 
its  place  among  the  potent  agencies  of  man’s  or¬ 
ganic  progress. 

Art  is  the  very  flowering  of  the  whole  evolution¬ 
ary  process,  simply  because  it  is  the  flowering  of 
the  human  spirit.  It  exists  only  in  man — the  high¬ 
est  level  to  which  evolution  has  attained.  But  its 
biological  value  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  man ’s  liigh- 

205 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

est  and  deepest  criticism  of  himself.  It  is  the  final 
interpretation  to  himself  of  his  own  passions,  hopes, 
fears,  vices,  virtues,  foolishness,  wisdom,  defects, 
beauty— his  bodily  and,  mental  potentialities  and 
character.  It  teaches  him  what  is  good  and  what  is 
bad  within  him.  It  lifts  him  to  new  critical  levels  of 
all  the  values  of  his  own  bodily  and  spiritual  life. 
It  inspires  him  to  his  loftiest  deeds  and  fills  him 
with  a  new  and  glorious  fear  of  wrong.  It  lifts  be¬ 
fore  him  the  highest  possible  objectives  of  ethics, 
and  gives  concreteness  and  immediacy  to  his  relig¬ 
ious  longings.  It  takes  the  chaos,  the  haphazard, 
the  melee  of  his  daily  life  and  sets  it  before  him  in 
ordered  simplicity,  symmetry  and  perspective.  It 
touches  his  world  with  new  adventure,  teaches  him 
to  guard  the  heart  with  a  new  wisdom,  gives  new 
trends  to  thought  and  destiny.  It  leads  the  dejected 
soul  forever  anew  to  the  still  and  holy  altars  of 
beauty  and  passion,  gives  an  ever  freshening  lilt 
and  joy  to  the  moral  struggle,  and  stamps  new  con¬ 
ceptions  of  life,  character  and  destiny  upon  the 
imagination  of  mankind. 

If,  then,  art  be  all  this,  and  we  know  it  is  and 
vastly  more,  it  must  have  some  meaning  in  that  evo¬ 
lutionary  process  by  which  a  spirit  capable  of  set¬ 
ting  in  critical  perspective  its  own  existence  came 
to  be.  The  biologist  can  find  no  evidence  of  de¬ 
sign  or  ideal  in  the  ordinary  sense  in  the  on¬ 
goings  of  nature.  But  he  has  been  able  to  find 
scarcely  any  character  in  plant  or  animal  which  has 
not  at  some  time  had  its  usefulness,  either  in  self- 

206 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


preservation,  or  the  furtherance  of  the  organic 
interests  of  the  race.  And,  on  its  face,  it  seems  hard¬ 
ly  probable  that  so  enormous,  so  universal,  so  insis¬ 
tent  a  passion  and  capacity  as  art  should  not  be  of 
equally  large  value  in  aiding  the  being  who  achieved 
it  to  enhance  his  now  conscious  journey  toward 
greater  complexity  of  structure,  economy  and,  there¬ 
fore,  beauty  of  movement  and  general  excellence  of 
being. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  Frederick  Adams  Woods 
to  have  put  this  supposition  to  the  test  of  critical 
examination.  His  results,  while  not  absolutely 
conclusive,  are  strongly  suggestive.  It  is  in  art  that 
we  have  our  chiefest  records  of  the  form  and  ap¬ 
pearance  of  the  men  and  women  of  former  ages. 
Doctor  Woods  has  studied  these  records  extensively 
in  order  to  unravel,  if  possible,  their  biological 
significance.  He  finds  certain  changes  in  facial 
structure  which  are,  at  least,  concomitant  with  simi¬ 
lar  changes  in  the  art  of  portraiture.  Briefly  Doc¬ 
tor  Woods  finds  that  during  the  Italian  Benaissance 
throughout  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  the 
painters  and  sculptors  of  Italy  produced  constantly 
a  certain  type  of  face  somewhat  similar  to  the  faces 
which  the  Greek  artists  so  much  admired  and  which 
they  probably  reproduced  from  among  their  Nordic 
co-partners  in  that  wonderful  civilization.  This 
Italian  face  was  characterized  by  a  beautiful 
“classic”  forehead;  somewhat  thin,  delicately  mold¬ 
ed  nose;  low  orbital  arch  above  the  eyes;  almost 
straight  or  slightly  curved  eyebrows ;  the  eyes 

207 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


deeply  set  and  close  together;  the  upper  eyelid 
scarcely  discernible;  and  the  cheeks  flowing  down 
in  gently  chiseled  contour — the  whole  presenting  an 
appearance  which  corresponds  with  our  ideals 
to-day  of  a  very  rich  and  alluring  type  of  beauty, 
both  in  men  and  women. 

However,  at  the  same  time,  the  painters  in  north¬ 
ern  Europe — the  Dutch,  Flemish,  French  and  Eng¬ 
lish — were  producing  a  type  astonishingly  different. 
One  can  scarcely  call  the  faces  of  both  men  and 
women  left  us  by  the  painters  of  that  period  in 
North  Europe  anything  but  bovine.  The  whole  face 
is  broad  and  heavy;  the  orbitral  arch  above  the 
eyes  wide  and  flaring,  giving  thus  a  semicircular 
line  to  the  eyebrows,  and  a  lack  of  gentility  to  the 
forehead;  the  eves  are  set  almost  on  the  surface  of 
the  face,  indeed  in  some  cases  protruding;  the  eye¬ 
lid  is  broad,  thick  and  hangs  heavily;  the  nose 
bridge  is  low7  and  wide,  setting  the  eyes  far  apart, 
and  the  cheek  bones  are  high  and  prominent,  giving 
much  the  appearance  in  this  respect  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Indian.  The  whole  impression  one  gains  is  that 
of  a  race  whose  faces  were  4  ‘  massive  but  not  beau¬ 
tiful.”  It  is  as  rare  to  find  a  delicate,  beautiful 
face,  as  our  ideals  go,  among  the  northern  painters 
at  that  time,  as  to  find  a  heavy,  ugly  one  among  the 
painters  of  Italy,  Spain  and  southern  Europe. 

But  note  the  astonishing  change  that  took  place 
within  the  following  two  to  three  hundred  years— 
scarcely  a  day  in  the  chronology  of  evolution.  A 
study  of  the  north  country  painters  of  the  seven- 

208 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


teenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  reveals  that  the 
proportion  of  faces  of  the  delicate  “Greek”  or  Ital¬ 
ian  type  had  enormously  increased.  I  have  myself, 
with  the  aid  of  an  assistant,  confirmed  this  by  a 
study  of  thousands  of  photographs  and  paintings. 
By  the  year  1800  it  becomes  as  rare  to  find  an  ugly, 
repellent,  bovine  face  among  the  northern  painters 
as  it  was  formerly  to  find  a  beautiful,  classic  one. 
The  change,  whatever  caused  it,  is  unmistakable,  in¬ 
deed  truly  astonishing. 

Doctor  Woods  has  proved  that  the  same  remark¬ 
able  changes  have  taken  place  in  the  faces  of  our 
American  people.  Our  Puritan  ancestors,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  did  not  look  as  we  do.  The  faces  of 
the  present-day  upper  middle  classes  in  America  are 
much  more  refined  and  tend  much  more  toward  the 
Greek  type  than  did  those  of  the  Founders.  Any 
one  by  a  little  labor  can  confirm  these  unquestion¬ 
able  facial  changes.  The  change  is  fundamental 
and  anatomical,  not  merely  a  change  of  habitual  ex¬ 
pression,  due  to  culture  or  changes  in  education. 

Here,  then,  at  last,  is  a  clearly  cut  case  where 
we  have  caught  evolution  on  the  wing.  I  might  add 
that  Prof.  Karl  Pearson  has  also  with  other  mater¬ 
ial,  by  refined  mathematical  methods,  proved  that 
evolution  is  going  on  in  the  constitution  of  man. 

Now  this  facial  change  has  been  caused  by  some¬ 
thing.  The  evolution  is  there.  We  can  only  sur¬ 
mise  the  causes.  There  can  be  little  doubt  but  that 
refinement  of  facial  features  and  bodily  structure 
are  correlated  with  refinement  of  intelligence  and 

209 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


character.  Unknown  factors  of  variation,  adaption 
and  selection  bring  this  about.  But  Doctor  Woods 
has  made  the  highly  plausible  suggestion  that  the 
i  influence  of  art — especially  Greek  art  and  ideals 
revived  by  the  Renaissance — was  a  potent  factor  in 
j  this  marked  facial  change.  Raphael,  Angelo,  Cima- 
bue,  Mantagna  and  the  great  Renaissance  painters 
were  probably  potent  agents  of  evolution.  As  their 
ideals  of  facial  beauty  spread  to  the  north  country, 
they  probably  became  much  admired,  especially 
among  the  upper  economic  and  political  classes  who 
could  afford  portraits.  Men  selected  as  wives  those 
women  who  approached  this  type  of  beauty.  The 
ancient,  bovine  types  were  rejected.  As  any  farmer 
quickly  improves  the  beauty  of  his  animals  by  se¬ 
lection,  in  this  way  the  beauty  of  the  human  race,  in 
all  probability,  rapidly  improved. 

Confirmation  of  this  view  is  seen  in  the  low  ani- 
malized  types  of  women  among  the  farmers  of  East 
Prussia,  or  indeed  any  region  of  the  world,  where 
women  are  compelled  to  do  the  heavy  work  of  men. 
Men  come  to  admire  the  stout,  broad-backed,  ugly 
woman  who  can  stand  that  sort  of  thing.  Men  do 
tend  strongly  to  marry  the  women  of  their  dreams. 
Whether  those  dreams  be  dreams  of  beauty  or  ugli¬ 
ness,  intelligence  or  stupidity,  determines  the  type 
of  women  and  consequently  children  that  will  peo- 
%  pie  a  nation.  And  the  character  of  man’s  dreams  is 
largely  influenced  by  the  creations  of  the  artist. 
But  if  you  impress  women  into  industries  under  un¬ 
healthful  conditions,  and  give  them  work  too  hard 

210 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


for  sweet  and  delicate  womanhood  to  bear  you  will 
as  sure  as  heaven  pay  a  frightful  penalty.  Woman¬ 
ly  loveliness  will  vanish  like  a  glacier  before  a 
tropic  sun.  Men  will  admire  the  women  who  can 
stand  up  under  such  conditions  and  bear  children 
who  can  also  endure  the  same  brutal  life.  Profes¬ 
sor  Ross,  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  has  long 
ago  sounded  the  alarm  that  the  American  woman  is 
growing  ugly,  partly  from  brutalizing  industry  and 
partly  because  you  have  for  two  generations  been 
recruiting  your  immigrants  from  those  Old  World 
populations  where  men  for  ages  have  admired  the 
low  stout,  stupid,  ugly  women  who  could  help  them 
pull  through  such  frightful  social,  political,  indus¬ 
trial  and  educational  conditions. 

From  extensive  study  I  have  myself  become  con¬ 
vinced  that  this  selection  is  going  on  all  about  us 
with  enormous  rapidity.  Department  store  men 
and  women,  mechanics,  miners,  sales  people  and  in¬ 
tellectuals  marry  each  other,  partly  through  propin¬ 
quity  and  partly  from  admiration  of  these  types  of 
individuals.  A  vast  new  evolution  is  undoubtedly 
going  on  and  setting  up  great  types  of  specialized 
talents  and  anatomical  structure,  temperaments 
and  psychological  trends  all  through  our  popula¬ 
tion.  This  can  be  made  either  beneficial  or  the  re¬ 
verse  owing  largely  as  to  how  you  manage  industry 
on  the  one  hand,  so  as  to  protect  excellence  and  give 
it  survival  value,  and  as  to  how,  through  art,  you  edu¬ 
cate  men’s  and  women’s  ideals  of  each  other.  As  I 
have  repeatedly  said,  men  move  not  only  politically, 

211 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


educationally  and  socially  toward  the  man  they  are 
looking  at,  but  they  also  move  biologically  in  the 
same  direction. 

We  see  then  the  biological  significance  of  art. 
It  seems  to  me  to  be  tremendous.  Education,  ethics 
and  religion  all  tend  in  the  same  direction.  Indus¬ 
try,  economic  conditions,  social  and  political  cus¬ 
toms  all  sweep  men  whether  they  will  or  no  in  the 
same  great  evolutionary  trend.  We  have  already 
seen  that  art  has  probably  had  profound  influence 
in  improving  the  physical  beauty  of  the  race.  And 
beauty  is  the  physiological  basis  of  all  that  evolu¬ 
tion  has  thought  worth  preserving.  It  is  often  said 
that  “ beauty  is  only  skin  deep.”  It  is  as  deep  as 
protoplasm,  as  inherent  as  intellect,  as  vital  as  char¬ 
acter.  In  the  large  it  is  woven  into  the  protoplas¬ 
mic  fabric  of  the  race  with  all  that  is  admirable  and 
excellent.  It  is  correlated  with  intelligence  and  re¬ 
finement  of  soul.  It  is  the  one  sure  germinal  basis 
of  a  great  racial  stock.  It  blooms  instantly  where 
given  a  happy  soil  and  a  congenial  air.  Every  peri¬ 
od  when  men  have  turned  their  minds  to  culture,  and 
things  of  the  spirit,  beauty,  intelligence  and  char¬ 
acter  have  all  flowered  together  with  exquisite  frag¬ 
rance.  Every  high  period  of  human  splendor  has 
been  characterized  by  beautiful,  intelligent  and 
noble  men  and  women.  Beauty  bloomed  all  through 
feudalism  and  chivalry.  It  was  associated  with  all 
that  meant  character  and  intelligence.  It  remains 
to  be  seen  if  democracy  will  make  men  and  women 
beautiful  or  ugly.  If  it  fails  to  make  them  beauti- 

212 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ful  and  keep  them  so  it  will  fail  to  produce  intelli¬ 
gence  and  character.  Unless  art,  vocational  and  hu¬ 
manistic  education  can  rush  to  the  rescue,  and  make 
beauty  of  body  and  mind  the  very  atmosphere  amid 
which  men  live,  then  democracy,  ugliness  and  stu¬ 
pidity  will  all  become  synonymous  terms. 

Art  is  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  in  which  all 
ideals  of  beauty  and  excellence  are  carried  before 
the  race.  Science  deals  with  matter  and  energy, 
but  art  deals  with  life.  Four-fifths  of  life  are  not 
in  the  realm  of  science.  They  are  probably  the  best 
four-fifths.  They  lie  in  the  field  of  beauty,  art, 
imagination,  dream.  And  it  is  only  when  art  can 
give  men  beautiful  dreams  that  they  will  progress 
in  mind  and  person  toward  that  ‘ 4  sweet  fulfillment 
of  the  flesh’ ’ — beauty.  For  art,  as  nothing  else, 
sets  up  rich  ideals  of  mate-selection  between  man 
and  woman.  It  teaches  men  and  women  what  is  and 
what  is  not  beautiful,  what  to  select  and  what  to  re¬ 
ject  in  each  other.  And  mate-selection  between  man 
and  woman  is  the  supreme  cause  of  racial  glory  and 
decline.  Art  absolutely  creates  for  us  our  ideals  of 
human  beauty  and  inner  excellence.  And  our  ideals 
of  beauty  and  inner  excellence  determine  the  basis 
of  all  evolution,  mate-selection.  Beauty  is  thus  nat¬ 
ure’s  flaming  banner  of  her  own  evolution. 

And  if,  as  we  have  seen,  ideals  of  physical 
beauty  can,  through  marriage  selection,  change 
the  faces  of  men,  so  can  moral  beauty,  by  the  same 
process,  change  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men.  Art 
is  thus  man’s  highest  contribution  to  the  evolution- 

213 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ary  process.  Science  can  never  create  art,  but  it 
can  contribute  to  its  truth.  Our  artists,  unfortun¬ 
ately,  are  not  as  a  body  sufficiently  conversant  with 
science.  They,  therefore,  to  just  that  degree  give  us 
false  art,  false  ideals.  We  see,  for  instance,  Ibsen, 
great  poet  of  man ’s  inner  conflict,  giving  us  totally 
false  ideals  of  heredity.  We  see  dramatists  and 
story- writers  giving  us  absurd  and  antiquated  psy¬ 
chology,  and  thus  absurd  ideas  of  human  nature. 
We  read  of  stupid  parents  with  noble,  beautiful 
children  and  men  of  genius  with  worthless  off¬ 
spring.  These  do  occur,  but  they  are  nature  ’s  excep¬ 
tions,  and  easily  explained  on  grounds  of  science. 
But  they  are  not  correct  ideals  for  the  masses. 

We  see  our  poets  giving  us  chemistry  and  phy¬ 
sics  that  are  not  of  this  world.  Keats  and  Shelley, 
as  the  Cambridge  biologist  Haldane  has  pointed  out, 
were  the  last  great  English  poets  who  understood 
chemistry.  Chemistry  never  made  a  poet,  but  it  can 
help  him  to  give  us  truer  poetry.  Tennyson  could 
not  have  written  Locksley  Hall  "without  a  fair  com¬ 
prehension  of  Science.  Even  Shakespeare  often 
gives  us  a  wrong  cosmogony  and  psychology.  The 
critic  unschooled  in  science  assures  us  his  poetry 
does  not  suffer.  But  the  scientist  knows  his  poetry 
does  suffer  because  anything  suffers  that  isn’t  true. 
No  wrong  conception  can  give  us  a  right  ideal.  We 
see  preachers,  who  should  be  artists,  trying  to  make 
men  good  with  a  physics,  chemistry,  biology  and 
psychology  that  belong  to  the  twilight  of  the  gods. 
Men  of  intelligence  blush,  and  the  ignorant  man  is 

214 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


misled.  Nearly  every  writer  and  dramatist  of  the 
world  is  committed  to  a  fantastic  belief  in  the  all- 
powerful  influence  of  environment.  It  is  not  neces¬ 
sary  that  artists  should  become  scientists.  Art  is 
more  precious  than  science.  Men  can  live  without 
science,  but  they  can  not  live  significantly  without 
art.  But  artists  should  become  familiar  with  at 
least  the  half-dozen  great  simple  conceptions  that 
lie  at  the  bases  of  each  field  of  science.  Often  this 
can  be  achieved  by  an  intelligent  man  within  a  week. 
In  the  realm  of  art  the  real  and  ideal  become  one. 
But  if  his  real  be  wrong,  his  ideal  will  be  wrong.  In 
art  the  real  and  ideal  are  one,  just  because  we  are  in 
a  realm  of  spiritual  values  and  not  scientific  values. 
But  art  will  be  great  as  it  gives  us  true  values  blos¬ 
soming  out  of  the  soil  of  a  real  world. 

The  next  great  poet  of  the  world,  whether  he 
write  poetry,  paint  pictures,  tells  stories  or  builds 
temples,  will  be  the  man  who  understands  these 
things.  He  will  understand  the  real  world — its 
chemistry,  biology,  psychology,  human  nature,  or¬ 
ganic  life,  its  mathematical  physics  and  modes  of 
motion.  And  upon  this  intellectual  foundation  he 
will  build  for  us  his  world  of  spiritual  values  by 
which  a  great  life  can  be  lived  by  great  men.  He 
will  then  make  art  seem  to  us  what  it  really  is — 
‘ c the  most  exalting  and  despairing  thing  we  know,” 
— despairing  because  it  sets  us  in  the  presence  of 
unattainable  excellence,  exalting  because  in  the 
same  moment  it  fills  us  with  a  solid  and  energizing 
sense  of  infinite  potency. 

215 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


Such  art  will  lead  men  forward  to  a  better  hu¬ 
man  nature.  Art  will  then  become  what  it  should 
be  and  is,  man’s  highest  contribution  to  the  pro¬ 
cesses  of  his  own  evolution.  It  will  lead  men  by  its 
gentle  selective  processes  and  its  creative  ideals 
toward  a  wiser,  saner,  healthier  and  more  beautiful 
human  race.  Then,  at  last,  in  a  race  endowed  with 
inborn  health,  sanity,  energy,  intelligence  and  beau¬ 
ty,  the  long  red  gauntlet  of  natural  selection  will 
have  come  to  its  beneficent  end. 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Internationalism 

The  ninth  commandment  of  science  to  statesman¬ 
ship  and  to  all  mankind  is  the  duty  of  internation¬ 
alism.  As  Professor  Giddings  has  suggested  in  his 
profound  analysis  entitled,  Studies  in  the  Theory  of 
Society ,  there  looms  before  every  dream  and 
achievement  of  man  huge,  defiant,  portentous,  the 
one  eternal,  inescapable  question:  “Is  it  'peace  or  is 
it  warV ' 

If  you  should  write  upon  the  cover  of  every 
book,  above  the  entrance  to  every  school  and  church, 
above  the  door  of  every  home  and  the  cradle  of  ev¬ 
ery  babe  this  black  and  terrifying  question,  “IS  IT 
PEACE  OR  IS  IT  WAR?”  you  would  describe  the 
precise  situation  of  the  human  species  on  this  globe. 
It  always  has  been  so;  it  always  will  be.  The  an¬ 
swer  has  always  come  in  the  sepulchral  voice  of  hell 
— “War!”  Surely,  surely,  surely  the  spirit  of  man 
is  capable  of  answering  it  in  the  angelic  voice  of 
heaven — * ‘  Peace !  ’  ’ 

I  think,  Your  Excellency,  we  can  discuss  this 
question  with  clasped  hands,  common  desires, 
united  hopes  and  similar  sympathies.  The  agony 
of  the  world  is  too  great,  too  much  of  its  soil  is  still 

217 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


wet  with  tears  and  blood  for  men  to  approach  the 
problem  of  peace  or  war  to-day  in  any  other  spirit. 
Yet,  there  is  one  man  who,  I  think,  can  not  help  ns — 
the  pacifist.  He  might  achieve  a  world  of  stagna¬ 
tion,  but  not  a  world  of  virile  and  adventurous 
peace.  He  would  have  you  believe  that  men  hate 
war.  Do  not  let  him  deceive  you  with  any  such 
biological  buncombe.  It  will  lead  you  into  fantastic 
and  futile  undertakings.  You  must  understand  and 
legislate  for  a  human  being  that  exists,  not  for  one 
that  does  not.  Men  love  war.  They  always  have; 
they  always  will.  “All  wild  animals  die  a  tragic 
death.  ”  And  in  doing  so  even  the  timidest  live  one 
moment  of  superlative  ecstasy.  And  men,  in  their 
brief  moment  of  civilization,  have  not  forgotten  this 
most  precious  teaching  of  evolution.  If  nature  had 
not  taught  every  organic  thing  to  rush  to  its  death 
in  one  last  flame  of  ecstatic  life,  the  courage  which 
makes  us  believe  that  peace  is  possible  would  never 
have  bloomed. 

I  think  this  is  basic  to  all  discussion  of  this 
irrepressible  issue.  I  can  see  no  natural  peace  in 
nature.  I  can  see  only  the  peace  of  educated  intel¬ 
ligence.  Nature  is  war  to  the  death.  It  was  she  who 
taught  men  to  meet  their  “rendezvous  with  death” 
with  the  gaiety  of  wedding  bells.  But  in  doing  this 
she  had  to  develop  within  the  organism  two  char¬ 
acters  that  are  at  war  with  war — intelligence  and 
sympathy.  Intelligently  guided  sympathy  is  our 
only  biological  hope.  Intelligence  and  sympathy 
made  the  group  possible,  yet  the  moment  the  group 

218 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


either  attacks  or  is  attacked  they  are  both  lost.  Hate 
and  selfishness  instantly  resume  their  primal  sway. 
We  are  told  by  those  who  still  live  in  the  ancient 
world  of  1913,  “In  time  of  peace  prepare  for  war.” 
Quite  the  contrary.  In  time  of  peace  prepare  for 
eternal  peace.  Prepare  men  ?s  intelligence  and  sym¬ 
pathy,  by  education,  art,  ethics,  philosophy,  religion, 
by  new  social,  economic  and  political  objectives,  so 
that  in  the  hour  of  passion,  reason  and  humanity 
will  not  lose  their  majestic  sanctions  to  the  mad  ter¬ 
ror  of  tooth  and  claw.  The  human  spirit  has 
bloomed  out  of  blood  and  only  an  insistent  air  of  in¬ 
telligent  humanism  will  preserve  and  spread  its 
perfume. 

There  are  three  main  biological  causes  for  war. 
Deepest  and  oldest  is  self-preservation — the  first 
necessity,  therefore  the  first  “law”  of  nature.  Sec¬ 
ond,  the  preservation  of  offspring,  and  third,  pres¬ 
ervation  of  the  group.  But,  within  the  historic 
period,  war  in  the  larger  sense,  has  been  mainly  moti¬ 
vated,  I  think  by  two  things:  first,  “the  bitter  cry  of 
the  children,” — the  preservation  of  the  offspring — 
and  second,  social,  economic  and  political  national-1 
ism — the  aggrandizement  of  the  group.  This  is  not 
group  preservation  but  satisfaction  of  its  egotism. 
It  is  the  one  great  extra-biological  cause  for  war, 
and,  therefore,  the  most  susceptible  to  education. 

The  bitter  cry  of  the  children  often  causes  war, 
because  children  cry  for  but  one  thing,  food.  You 
and  I  cry  for  wealth,  culture,  economic  imperialism, 
national  expansion,  upholstered  furniture  and  fine 

219 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


homes.  But  children  cry  for  but  one  thing,  some¬ 
thing  to  eat.  And  when  children  have  nothing  to 
eat,  nations  go  to  war. 

There  are  also  many  psychological  causes  of 
war.  But  the  bio-economic  situation  of  humanity 
can  always  be  summed  up  in  the  very  simple  for¬ 
mula  that  when  population  outruns  food  supply 
nature  leaps  from  her  lair  with  her  three  swords  of 
organic  destiny,  Famine,  Pestilence  and  War,  and 
reaps  her  human  harvest.  Especially  does  she  mow 
down  the  children — the  children  at  one  end  in  the 
cradle  and  the  children  at  the  other  end  in  their  dot¬ 
age,  while  the  prime  manhood  of  the  nation  dies 
fighting  for  food  on  the  battle-field. 

“But,”  exclaims  the  laissez  faire  selectionist, 
“this  gives  natural  selection  her  happy  chance  to 
produce  strength  and  genius!”  True  enough.  But 
what  is  the  use  of  strength  and  genius  in  a  world 
not  fit  to  live  inf 

Yet,  unless  through  “adaptive  fecundity”  you 
do  adapt  the  numbers  of  your  people  to  the  ca¬ 
pacity  of  the  soil  to  feed  them,  and  unless  through 
preferential  fecundity  you  elevate  their  intelli¬ 
gence  and  character  that  they  may  make  the  most 
of  the  soil  nature  has  allotted  them,  and,  still  further, 
unless  by  education  you  train  them  to  a  high  co¬ 
operative  life  with  their  neighbor  peoples,  then  this 
heartless,  triple-headed  Juggernaut,  Famine,  Pesti¬ 
lence  and  War,  will  grind  on  its  ruthless  way.  By 
and  by,  no  matter  how  beautiful  your  temples  nor 
how  bountiful  your  culture,  your  hungry,  diseased, 

220 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


bleeding  civilization  will  go  down  before  some  other 
hungry,  diseased,  bleeding  civilization,  fighting  for 
food  for  its  children.  And  the  thing  we  call  “  Chris¬ 
tian’  *  civilization  becomes  a  travesty  upon  the 
name. 

If  you  doubt  this  denouement  to  your  brilliant 
social  order  and  colossal  mechanical  power,  let  me 
remind  you  that  at  last  our  scientists  have  been 
able,  for  the  first  time,  to  make  a  truly  planetary 
survey  of  the  food  and  population  problems.  In  a 
summary  by  Prof.  E.  M.  East,  of  Harvard,  which  is 
characterized  by  the  eminent  Dr.  Raymond  Pearl, 
of  Johns  Hopkins,  as  the  “most  brilliant  survey 
of  the  population  question  of  this  generation,  ’ 9 
Professor  East  points  out  that  every  civilized  land, 
Europe,  America,  the  Orient,  has  long  ago  exceeded 
the  food  capacity  of  its  own  soil,  and  is  feeding 
its  people  from  the  uncivilized,  more  sparsely 
settled  quarters  of  the  globe.  Within  fifteen 
years,  he  tells  us,  the  United  States  will  not 
have  a  pound  of  food  to  export,  unless  it  be  in  ex¬ 
change  for  some  other  form  of  food,  and  that  a 
short  crop  will  mean  the  universal  rationing  of 
food  more  severe  than  during  the  Great  War.  The 
bitter  cry  of  your  own  children  for  food  is  not  so 
far  away  as  you  so  comfortably,  even  egotistically 
think.  The  scientist  can  already  hear  their  faint 
but  terrifying  wail  in  the  near  distance. 

Further  than  this,  Havelock  Ellis,  the  British 
scientist-essayist,  calls  attention  to  a  fact  obvious 
to  common  sense  but  utterly  overlooked  by  states- 

221 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


manship.  This  significant  fact  is  that  throughout 
its  millions  of  years  on  earth  up  until  1800,  the  hu¬ 
man  race  had  increased  from  its  first  pair  to  only 
eight  hundred  and  fifty  millions.  But  in  1800  the 
industrial  revolution  mechanized  civilization.  As  a 
result,  an  enormous  increment  of  wealth,  trans¬ 
portation  and  food  began.  And,  within  the  mere 
flash  of  a  century,  the  human  race  has  leaped  from 
eight  hundred  fifty  millions  to  nearly  two  thousand 
millions ! 

But,  more  significant  still,  East  and  Pearl  have 
shown,  the  latter  by  brilliant  experiments  upon  the 
fruit  fly,  Drosophila,  and  by  ingenius  biometrical 
calculations  upon  human  populations,  that  the  final 
goal  of  man  on  earth,  as  to  mere  numbers,  is  al¬ 
ready  clearly  in  sight.  You  talk  glibly  of  a  half  bil¬ 
lion  in  the  United  States  alone.  You  have  not  reck¬ 
oned,  Sir,  with  nature.  Pearl  has  shown  that  they 
will  never  reach  more  than  two  hundred  millions. 
You  think  to  feed  them  continuously  from  the  lux¬ 
uriant  under-populated  tropics.  But,  under  the 
world-wide  birth  release  of  wealth  and  science, 
they,  too,  are  filling  up.  Knibbs,  a  statistician  quoted 
by  Ellis,  believes  the  world  is  filling  up  at  the  rate 
of  twenty  millions  a  year — a  new  France  every  twen¬ 
ty-four  months.  East  estimates  it  at  fifteen  mil¬ 
lions,  two  new  Belgiurns— almost  two  new  Canadas 
every  year !  Despite  every  triumph  of  science,  East 
believes  that  the  whole  earth  will  never  feed  more 
than  five  billion  human  beings,  and  that  the  day 
When  they  will  all  be  here  is  not  more  than  six  to 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


eight  generations  away.  Our  great-grandchildren, 
possibly  some  of  our  grandchildren,  will  be  num¬ 
bered  among  them. 

Three  things,  as  Ellis  elaborates,  have  occurred 
but  yesterday  that  should  give  statesmanship  pause. 
First,  the  industrial  revolution,  which,  as  wealth  and 
food  always  do,  speeded  up  procreation  enormously. 
Second,  the  growth  of  hygiene,  medicine  and  sanita¬ 
tion,  which  prolongs  life,  as  I  have  shown,  particu¬ 
larly  among  the  weaklings.  And  third,  the  growth 
of  humanitarian  sentiment — -especially  under  the 
influence  of  Christianity — which  has  again  saved 
feeble  life  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  and  prolonged  its 
existence,  and  period  of  child-bearing,  at  the 
other.  The  world,  then,  will  soon  be  full,  but  what 
will  it  be  full  of!  When  you  can  already  sail  round 
the  earth,  and  can  soon  fly  round  it,  and  send  your 
voice  round  it  eight  times  within  a  second,  it  has 
shrunk  from  the  “vast  new  worlds ”  of  Magellan 
and  Columbus,  or  even  the  “limitless  prairies” 
.  of  our  own  boyhood,  to  a  tiny  biological  experiment 
station.  And  yet  it  is  an  experiment  so  great,  so 
tumbling  with  gigantic  forces,  so  incalculable  in  its 
evolutionary  trends,  that  statesmanship  may  well 
stand  aghast  at  the  prospect  of  guiding  it  to  any¬ 
thing  but  chaos. 

What  have  you  done  so  far  to  guide  it!  Wealth, 
more  goods,  more  wages,  power,  leisure,  amuse¬ 
ment,  speed — these  have  been  your  personal  ideals. 
Nationalism  and  economic  imperialism  have  been 
your  goals  of  statesmanship.  So-called  democratic 

223  • 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


peoples  have  called  it  more  tenderly  national  ex¬ 
pansion,  national  development.  These  phrases 
make  a  more  soothing  emollient  to  the  national  con¬ 
science.  Here  in  America  yon  pride  yourself  that 
you  have  finished  the  physical  conquest  of  the  con¬ 
tinent.  Indeed  you  have.  You  gave  the  Indian  the 
doctrine  of  the  atonement  in  exchange  for  his  lands. 
You  traded  him  cheap  whisky,  measles,  typhoid,  tu¬ 
berculosis,  syphillis,  and  a  sex-morals  worse  than 
his  own,  for  his  natural  resources,  so  long  ago  that 
you  have  comfortably  forgotten  about  it.  You  did 
little  better  by  Mexico.  It  merely  happened  that 
they  could  breed  too  fast  to  make  room  for  you  to 
occupy  their  soil.  The  treatment  of  every  “  Chris¬ 
tian  ’  ’  nation  by  every  other  has  been  precisely  on  a 
par  with  this.  It  is  merely  typical  of  all  inter¬ 
nationalism  up  to  date. 

As  the  biologist  sees  war  to-day,  there  are  two 
great  conceptions  of  the  social  destiny  of  man  which 
lie  back  of  it ;  first,  nationalism,  and  second,  nation¬ 
ality.  The  latter  conception  of  nationhood,  natural 
nationality,  is  the  fruition  of  the  finest  things  in 
human  nature.  Economic  and  political  nationalism 
is  the  blackest,  ghastliest  thing  that  ever  stalked 
with  its  blood-spattered  seven-league  boots  across 
this  fair  earth.  Nationality,  as  pointed  out  by  that 
most  brilliant  of  our  social  philosophers,  Everett 
Dean  Martin,  is  the  flower  of  all  that  is  most  dis¬ 
tinctive  and  unique  in  the  cultures  of  the  world’s 
varied  peoples.  As  suggested  by  Glenn  Frank,  it 
makes  4 1  cultural  nationalism,”  as  opposed  to  politi- 

224 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


cal  and  economic  nationalism,  the  proper  ideal  of 
every  state. 

A  man  naturally  loves  his  country.  It  may  be 
poor  but  it  is  his  own.  He  loves  the  rocks  and  hill¬ 
sides,  the  breezes  that  blow  across  them,  the  trees, 
the  very  vegetation  amid  which  he  was  born.  He 
loves  the  old  home,  its  folks  and  folkways;  he  loves 
the  path  he  trod  to  school,  the  schoolroom,  the  col¬ 
lege,  the  university.  He  loves  his  nation’s  art  and 
literature.  They  give  him  nearly  all  his  world  wis¬ 
dom  and  criticism  of  life.  He  loves  his  country’s 
history,  although  so  far  his  school-books  have  been 
too  much  steeped  in  the  records  of  its  nationalism* 
instead  of  its  cultural  development  and  spiritual 
conquests.  But  these  things  make  up  nationality. 
A  man  will  fight  for  them,  and  he  is  a  poor  thing  if 
he  will  not.  They  are  the  things  men  live  by,  love  by, 
die  by.  They  ought  to  be.  This  earth  offers  noth¬ 
ing  richer. 

There  be  those  who  for  all  this  would  substitute 
a  “  World  State.”  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  has,  I  think,  set 
out  for  inspection  all  there  is  to  this  conception.  Its 
romance  appeals  much  more  to  Mr.  Wells’  imagin¬ 
ation,  I  think,  than  its  common  sense  will  appeal  to 
the  judgment  of  mankind.  I  am  opposed  to  it  for 
six  distinct  reasons,  any  one  of  which  I  believe  fatal 
to  such  a  fantastic  project. 

First,  it  is  beyond  the  intellectual  power  of  man¬ 
kind.  Evolution  does  not  throw  up  leaders  fast 
enough  to  carry  it  on.  It  would  require  the  contin¬ 
uous  presence  in  the  world  of  Genghis  Khan,  Peri- 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


cles,  Alexander  the  Great,  Caesar,  Napoleon,  Lin¬ 
coln,  Roosevelt  and  Henry  Ford,  all  working  to¬ 
gether  with  the  spirit  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  with 
the  immediacy  of  a  social  heaven  before  them  to 
make  a  go  of  it. 

Second,  there  is  no  existent  psychology  to-day 
to  build  it  on.  Nobody  much  wants  it.  The  vast 
social  ardors  and  political  enthusiasms  necessary 
to  put  it  over,  even  for  trial,  simply  do  not  exist.  I 
beg  Mr.  Wells  to  point  to  any  evidence  of  them  any¬ 
where. 

Third,  4 ‘ liberty,’ ’  as  Edmund  Burke  said,  “must 
inhere  in  some  sensible  object.”  So  must  all  loy¬ 
alties.  Men  require  something  which  they  can  touch, 
see,  feel,  something  which  their  imaginations  can 
enclose.  Men  can  be  loyal  to  their  homes,  their 
county,  state  or  nation  because  they  are  theirs. 
They  are  personal  possessions.  But  men  can  not 
possess  a  World  State  even  in  imagination.  They 
can’t  belong  to  it.  They  could  nearly  as  easily 
be  loyal  to  the  planetary  system.  Men  will  fight  for 
a  red  or  white  rose,  but  not  for  the  size  or  color  of 
the  planets. 

Fourth,  it  would  not  only  fail  to  create  the  new 
loyalties  necessary,  but  it  would  destroy  the  old  ones 
* — the  great  deep  loyalties  of  nationality — all  those 
nourishing  things  that  give  uniqueness,  distinctive¬ 
ness,  picturesqueness,  peculiarity  and  quaintness 
to  the  inhabitants  of  each  separate  nation.  These 
are  too  precious,  too  interesting,  too  native.  No 
X^eople  would  ever  give  them  up.  They  give  frag- 

226 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ranee  to  a  people’s  life — they  are  its  essence  and 
perfume,  if  you  please,  its  local  color.  They  consti¬ 
tute  the  personality,  the  national  character  of  any 
people. 

Fifth,  the  benefits,  even  in  theory,  of  a  World 
State  are  not  obvious  enough  to  make  it  seem  a  fair 
exchange  for  the  rich  possessions  already  in  hand. 

Sixth,  I  think  it  biologically  and,  therefore,  politi¬ 
cally  impossible  if  man  is  ever  to  progress  toward 
richer  inborn  endowment,  or  even  maintain  his  pres¬ 
ent  organic  level.  It  would  shortly  plunge  the 
world  back  into  savagery.  This  latter  is  because,  as 
emphasized  by  Prof.  Edward  A.  Eoss,  national 
boundaries  prevent  the  peoples  of  lower  develop¬ 
ment  from  wandering  and  migrating  en  masse  hith¬ 
er  and  thither  over  the  earth,  pouring  their  mongrel 
blood  into  richer  racial  streams.  With  indiscrimin¬ 
ate  mixture  of  all  peoples  three  things  would  result : 
first,  a  lowering  of  the  blood  of  the  enterprising  pio¬ 
neers  who  discovered  and  developed  any  country; 
second,  a  lowering  of  morality,  of  social  and  cultural 
standards;  and  third,  a  lowering  of  its  political  ef¬ 
ficiency  with  a  resulting  chaos  in  its  economic  and 
political  machinery.  The  latter  two  are  certainly 
beginning  to  show  up  in  America,  owing  to  its  low 
immigrations  of  the  past  two  generations. 

Nations  can  not  progress  to  any  high  standards 
of  social  life,  gentility  and  polish,  nor  to  any  or¬ 
dered  working  of  political  institutions,  without  a 
homogeneous  national  mind,  a  common  racial  out¬ 
look,  similar  cultural  traditions,  common  language 

227 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


and  literature.  In  short,  there  must  be  a  national 
like-mindedness,  which  is  the  outcome  of  biological 
like-mindedness,  inner  similarity  of  physio-psycholo¬ 
gical  organization.  The  fact,  as  witnessed  by  the 
writer,  that  during  the  great  Dayton,  Ohio,  flood, 
many  of  the  foreigners  of  lower  cultures,  and 
doubtless  of  inferior  racial  make-up,  had  to  be 
forced  to  clean  the  mud  from  their  beds  and  houses 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet,  is  a  poignant  national 
reminder.  This  has  a  world  political  significance. 
Those  who  recklessly  think  the  mining  of  a  few 
more  tons  of  coal,  or  the  manufacture  of  a  few  more 
pounds  of  steel,  is  worth  this  price  have  reckoned  in 
dollars  instead  of  national  character.  This  lowering 
of  the  bars  of  our  American  development  which  was 
rapidly  trending  toward  unique,  picturesque  national 
individuality  in  art,  politics,  social  life,  education, 
folkways,  speech  and  literature  has  probably  robbed 
us  forever  of  our  manifest  destiny.  We  had  clearly 
before  us  to  become  a  greater  Greece,  a  grander 
Rome,  a  more  puissant  England  with  a  still  nobler 
influence.  We  are  the  children  of  these  cultures  and 
should  enrich  them.  With  wise  statesmanship,  we 
may  do  it  yet,  but  you  have  thus  infinitely  delayed 
such  a  consummation. 

The  ideal,  therefore,  of  nationality  which  should 
be  wrought  into  the  fabric  of  all  social  thought,  is 
that  of  a  stable  population  in  every  nation,  whether 
large  or  small,  of  very  great  racial  homogeneity, 
constantly  balanced  between  numbers  and  food  sup¬ 
ply,  developing  its  national  personality  and  slowly 

228 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


elevating  the  biological  quality  of  its  people  by  ev¬ 
ery  eugenical  agency.  With  nationalism  rampant, 
permanent  national  eugenics  is  impossible.  With  a 
world  state  it  is  equally  so.  It  is  only  those  who  do 
not  understand  eugenics  who  advocate  such  a 
scheme.  A  world  state  would* not  end  war  but  pro¬ 
mote  it.  It  would  not  speed  up  evolution  but  largely 
end  it.  You  must  set  up  immigration  barriers  or 
the  development  of  unique  and  virile  peoples  is  im¬ 
possible.  And  the  moment  you  set  up  immigration 
barriers,  as  Ross  has  pointed  out,  you  are  back  in¬ 
to  the  old  nationhood  again.  And  whether  that  na¬ 
tionhood  becomes  the  rich  fruition  of  character  and 
culture  of  nationality,  or  the  damnable,  blasting, 
war-breeding  thing  of  nationalism,  depends  wholly 
upon  the  intelligence  and  idealism  that  animates 
the  statesmanship  of  to-morrow.  Nationality, 
coupled  with  cooperative  internationality,  is  the 
biological  as  well  as  the  cultural,  economic  and  po¬ 
litical  hope  of  mankind. 

Do  not  imagine,  therefore,  Sir,  that  the  biologist 
is  looking  forward  to  some  new  baptism  of  broth¬ 
erly  love  descending  upon  men ;  or  that  the  world  is 
suddenly  going  to  become  a  mutual  admiration  so¬ 
ciety.  Men  in  the  mass  will  not  keep  the  peace  un¬ 
less  they  are  forced  to.  Nations  are  made  up  of 
crowds,  and  crowds  have  to  be  watched  and  guided. 
For  a  long  time  yet,  occasionally  somebody  will 
have  to  be  shot  and  others  hanged.  The  more  the 
national  ringleaders  in  such  cases  can  be  haled  into 
court,  and  this  salutary  process  personally  admin- 

229 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


istered,  the  more  rapdily  will  international  peace 
progress.  Had  a  dozen  of  the  right  men,  not  all  of 
them  in  Germany,  been  shot  in  1913,  when  it  was 
obvious  they  were  starting  out  with  intent  to  kill, 
the  war  would  not  and  could  not  have  occurred.  The 
world  is  to-day  allowing  a  great  many  of  these  arch¬ 
criminals  to  be  at  large  with  nothing  more  effective 
to  restrain  them  than  pious  resolutions  of  peace  so¬ 
cieties  and  prayer  by  the  churches  on  Sunday. 

But  the  more  the  mad  license  of  nationalism  can 
be,  by  force,  moral  suasion,  education  and  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  practical  international  agencies,  reduced 
to  the  liberty  of  free  nationalities  under  duly  en¬ 
forced  law,  the  fewer  the  hangings  and  the  farther 
between.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  either  the 
tongues  or  spirits  of  angels  are  about  to  possess 
mankind.  Internationality  will  come  only  by  hard 
work,  virile  thinking,  immense  tolerance  and  pa¬ 
tience,  and  education.  We  can  not  as  yet  safely  lay 
the  big  stick  on  the  shelf,  but  we  can  enormously 
reduce  its  size  and  make  it  an  international  instead 
of  a  national  weapon.  In  the  end  the  chief  weapons 
of  internationalism  are  books,  not  cannon;  exchange 
professorships,  not  poison  gas;  commercial  coop¬ 
eration  and  rationing  of  world-resources,  not  cut¬ 
throat  competition;  business,  not  bullets.  But  this 
ideal  will  come  about  neither  through  a  world  state, 
nor  a  sudden  baptism  of  brotherly  love,  but  through 
a  rational  education  of  man’s  present  psychology 
and  the  direction  to  more  intelligent  ends  of  those 
agencies  and  institutions  of  national  life  which  alone 

230 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


will  express  present  human  nature  and  give  it  its 
natural  satisfactions. 

Finally,  then,  it  is  evident  that  even  a  scientific 
civilization,  if  it  be  only  national,  will  soon  be 
crushed  by  war.  It  will  never  make  war,  but  it  must 
defend  itself.  Internationalism  is  no  longer  a 
theory  but  a  condition ;  not  a  dream  but  a  necessity 
of  national  existence.  No  nation,  therefore,  can 
remain  civilized  until  all  nations  become  civilized. 
As  a  selective  agent  for  killing  the  unfit  and 
preserving  the  fit,  it  is  probable  that  modern 
war  has  scarcely  more  survival  value  than  an  earth¬ 
quake.  And  just  as  earthquakes  are  going  out  of 
fashion,  so  must  war  go  the  same  way.  Your  na¬ 
tionalistic  slogans,  ambitions  and  power  propagan¬ 
das  are  not  only  not  sufficient  unto  a  world  order, 
but  they  are  not  even  sufficient  unto  a  permanent 
national  order. 

Moreover,  as  I  have  shown,  these  vast  problems 
of  race  migrations,  mixtures,  hybridizations,  and 
the  pressures  of  populations  upon  food,  no  matter 
how  many  times  you  multiply  your  food,  will  to¬ 
morrow  tax  all  the  genius,  both  of  science  and 
statesmanship.  Biology  has  exploded  the  myth  of 
the  melting  pot  as  it  has  the  myth  of  war.  Each 
race  and  nation  must  still  continue  to  create  its 
own  culture,  its  own  national  or  racial  psychology, 
its  own  specific  intellectual  discipline.  But  if  one 
culture  is  to  continue  to  crush  another  by  war,  or 
if  great  spiritual  disciplines  are  to  be  lost  by  the 
hybridization  of  strange  and  disharmonic  peoples, 

231 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


all  civilization  will  periodically  go  down  in  the 
biological  holocaust.  It  is  only  the  abounding  devel¬ 
opment  of  humanism  amid  the  free  air  of  individual¬ 
istic,  distinctive,  undisturbed  nationality,  free 
because  it  is  free  from  the  fear  of  war,  free  because 
it  has  espoused  the  scientific  spirit,  free  because  it 
has  thus  developed  the  power  and  passion  to  create 
for  all  mankind  a  true  world- wisdom  through  the 
friendly  fraternity  of  nations  that  will  ever  give 
this  blood-drenched,  but  still  “moonlit  and  dream- 
visited  planet’ 9  a  virile,  virtuous  and  adventurous 
peace.  And  to  attain  this  freedom,  your  narrow  na¬ 
tionalistic  patriotisms,  loyalties  and  ambitions  must 
merge — not  disappear,  for  men  must  not  become 
stagnant — but  merge  into  the  larger  loyalties,  the 
wider  moralities  and  the  higher  processes  of  the 
unitary  development  of  man. 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Philosophical,  Reconstruction 

Unless  the  miracle  should  happen  that  states¬ 
men  become  philosophers  and  philosophers  states¬ 
men,  it  is  no  part  of  your  direct  duty  as  a  statesman 
to  reconstruct  philosophy.  This  would  probably  be 
to  you  an  alarming  undertaking.  But  it  is  your 
very  pressing  duty  to  reconstruct  many  of  your 
ideas  of  social  control,  so  as  to  take  account  of  the 
radically  changed  view  of  life  and  the  world,  which 
the  philosophers  of  modern  science  are  rapidly  giv¬ 
ing  us.  Should  the  philosophers  take  their  new 
views  directly  to  the  people — should  John  Smith,  for 
instance,  get  wind  of  this  new  universe  and  new 
way  of  looking  at  life,  belief  and  conduct,  before  you 
see  what  is  going  on,  to  put  it  plainly,  it  may  be  all 
up  with  you. 

The  prime  difficulty,  indeed  the  genuine  danger, 
is  that  you  seem  to  be  proceeding  as  though  nothing 
in  the  intellectual  world  had  happened.  You  are 
apparently  proceeding  as  though  all  that  had  hap¬ 
pened  to  make  this  age  different  from  any  other, 
was  merely  a  few  inventions  for  making  money. 
That  science  and  its  philosophy  has  brought  men 
the  possibility  of  a  new  kind  of  life,  new  ethical, 
spiritual,  social  and  political  values  for  which  to 

233 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


live  has  apparently  never  entered  your  mind.  In 
reality  not  new  sources  of  profit  but  new  sources  of 
life  are  about  the  only  things  of  any  importance 
that  have  happened.  But  you  have,  so  far,  been  so 
engaged  with  the  former  that  it  seems  you  have 
scarcely  seen  or  felt  the  latter.  At  least  you  are  not 
utilizing  its  copious  political  inspirations  as  you 
could  and  should.  Both  you  and  John  Smith,  I  fear, 
are  still  viewing  this  whole  new  environment  of  sci¬ 
ence  mainly  with  mere  primitive  wonder.  As  to  its 
revealing  any  new  inner  meanings  of  life  itself,  it 
might  as  well  have  all  dropped  out  of  heaven.  It 
has  scarcely  changed  your  habits  of  thought  at  all. 
We  are  thus  in  danger  of  living  through  a  whole  age 
of  intellectual  conquests  of  untold  practical  signifi¬ 
cance  without  their  immense  spiritual  and  ethical 
significance  being  perceived  or  utilized. 

But,  in  truth,  the  very  intellectual  framework  of 
the  old  time  is  falling  about  our  heads.  The  first 
question  for  the  statesman  is :  What  can  and  what 
ought  we  to  save  from  the  wreckage?  The  second 
is:  What  can  we  build  from  the  new?  Can  enough  be 
salvaged  from  the  old,  and  enough  used  from  the 
new  and  be  taught  to  common  men  so  that  they  may 
act  together  toward  more  efficient  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  development?  To  aid  you  in  answering  these 
questions  is  the  new  task  of  philosophy. 

And  philosophy,  Your  Excellency,  is  undertak¬ 
ing  this  task  with  a  splendid  ardor  and  with  high  in¬ 
tellectual  abilities.  Philosophy,  as  James  maintained, 
is  mainly  the  record  of  the  temperaments  of  the  men 

234 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


I 


who  have  written  it.  But  in  our  day  philosophy  has 
changed  from  being  the  pleasing  dialectical  and 
temperamental  entertainment  of  a  few  men  into  the 
vital  concern  of  all  men.  It  has  ceased  to  be  the  in- 
ocuous  pursuit  of  metaphysical  abstractions  by  men 
far  from  the  world’s  affairs,  and  has  become  the 
earnest  searching  by  earnest  men  for  the  new  and 
illuminating  values  by  which  every-day  people  may 
live  better  every-day  lives. 

May  I  enforce  this  argument  by  a  simple  per¬ 
sonal  experience!  At  this  very  moment  I  have  just 
returned  from  a  reception  at  a  country  golf  club.  It 
was  made  up  of  people  from  “Main  Street,”  that 
sound  upper  middle  class,  the  return  of  which  to 
power  and  influence  I  believe,  with  John  Corbin, 
would  mark  the  turn  of  this  democracy  toward 
sound  aristo-republicanism.  But  their  conversation 
was  not  far  different  in  its  spiritual  essence  from 
what  it  would  have  been  a  generation  ago. 

However,  I  sat  apart  with  three  young  men 
from  the  State  University,  and  their  philosophy  is 
the  thing  out  of  which  the  coming  generation  will 
be  made.  One  was  a  grocer’s  son,  one  a  butcher’s 
son,  and  one  the  son  of  a  lawyer.  One  was  studying 
commerce,  one  engineering,  and  one  law.  But  they 
did  not  talk  much  of  these  things  nor  of  the  things 
of  Main  Street.  They  talked  eagerly  and  keenly  of 
the  new  ethical  implications  of  the  philosophy  of 
naturalism.  They  ran  easily  and  clearly  over  the 
main  positions  of  the  great  men  who  are  making 
that  philosophy.  The  grocer’s  son  suddenly  asked 

235 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


me:  “What  do  you  think  have  been  the  main  ethical 
trends  of  the  past  generation  ?  ’ 9  Certainly  an  im¬ 
posing  question.  But  by  way  of  answering  it  him¬ 
self,  he  outlined  a  thesis  of  astonishing  significance 
and  coherence.  It  was  but  yesterday  that  I  knew  all 
these  young  men  as  little  lads  in  knee  pants.  And 
now  they  are  our  coming  philosophers  of  common 
life.  They  are  no  more  thinking  the  thoughts  nor 
looking  at  life  in  the  same  terms  that  their  fathers 
and  mothers  did  than  Jesus  looked  at  life  through 
the  eyes  of  the  Pharisees.  A  change  is  coming  over 
the  world — an  intellectual  change.  Things  are  go¬ 
ing  to  happen  with  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  these 
young  men  pouring  continuously  through  our  col¬ 
leges,  provided  that  the  colleges  are  left  free.  And 
just  as  you  see  that  our  schools,  colleges  and  uni¬ 
versities  are  absolutely  free  from  economic  and  po¬ 
litical  domination,  will  these  young  men  help  the 
world  to  release  its  spiritual  energies  to  the  ardent 
allurements  and  importunate  enthusiasms  which 
are  inherent  in  the  new  philosophical  orientation  of 
men’s  minds  in  a  real,  instead  of  a  wish-fancy  world. 

But  no  one  can  in  the  least  blame  you  for  your 
past  contempt  of  philosophy.  You  have  looked  to 
it  in  vain  for  any  practical  aid.  Plato,  as  an  in¬ 
stance,  gave  you  an  Ideal  Republic  where  only  gods 
and  slaves  could  live,  but  it  does  not  help  you  to  get 
out  the  liberal  or  conservative  vote  on  a  rainy  elec¬ 
tion  day.  Hegel  gave  you  a  philosophy  of  history  of 
no  value  for  predicting  the  effect  of  compulsory 
education  of  plumbers,  or  of  a  League  of  Nations. 

236 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

And  Spencer  set  up  an  “ evolving  social  organism,” 
which,  with  or  without  effort  on  your  part,  would 
gently  but  firmly  shove  the  world  forward.  Yet, 
you  might,  for  all  that,  be  warned  of  the  immense 
political  effects  of  philosophy  by  the  fact  that  the 
English  Empiricists  were  immense  factors  in  the 
political  revolution  of  English  liberalism,  and  the 
German  Idealism  managed  to  link  itself  up  with  a 
biological  realism  without  which  Germany  may 
never  have  embarked  upon  economic  imperialism. 
At  least  Dewey  has  shown  the  profound  impact  of 
philosophy  upon  the  whole  sweep  of  IF elt-P olitih. 

You  have  not  believed  the  things  of  philos¬ 
ophy  because  most  of  them  were  probably  not  true 
and  only  “ interesting  if  true.”  But  in  our  time, 
not  only  has  science  taught  us  how  to  study  and 
utilize  matter  and  energy,  but  philosophy  is  rapidly 
teaching  us  how  to  view  them,  how  to  live  in  a  new 
way  with  them,  how  to  gain  a  new  life  for  ourselves 
out  of  them.  This  is  a  remarkable  thing — a  new 
mental  phenomenon  in  the  world.  Philosophy  has 
become  an  effort  to  give  to  the  common  man  a  new 
kind  of  life,  a  better,  richer,  more  manifold  life.  The 
men  engaged  in  making  it  are  desperately  in  ear¬ 
nest,  desperately  desirous  of  aiding  you  to  give  men 
more  to  live  for.  They  wish  respectfully  but  eager¬ 
ly  to  give  you  new  social  and  political  objectives, 
new  ways  of  viewing  truth  and  evaluating  experi¬ 
ence,  of  curing  ancient  evils  and  teaching  men  new 
virtues. 

So  far,  however,  you  have  held  yourself  aloof. 

237 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


If  you  suspected  a  man  were  a  philosopher  you  have 
seen  to  it  that  he  was  not  elected  to  office.  Such  a 
man  could  not  be  “practical.”  He  could  not  frame 
helpful  railroad  legislation,  nor  devise  means  for  se¬ 
curing  higher  wages,  lower  freight  rates  or  shorter 
hours.  It  has  seemed  not  to  have  occurred  to  you 
that  he  might  teach  men  better  railroad  philosophy, 
teach  them  finer  things  than  high  wages  or  shorter 
hours,  or  else  better  what  to  do  with  their  wages  and 
leisure  when  they  got  them.  You  “know  your  busi¬ 
ness”  and  “business  is  business.”  Granted.  But 
history  shows  that  often  men  with  very  poor  trans¬ 
portation  have  lived  very  rich  lives,  and  men  with 
very  low  wages  have  lived  very  lofty  lives,  solely 
because  philosophy  had  taught  them  what  things  to 
value  most  and  what  things  the  least. 

Men  always  seek  what  they  think  is  the  most 
worth  while.  And  whenever  men  have  dwelt  amid 
lofty  idealisms  it  has  somehow  always  resulted  in 
better  transportation  and  wages,  because  it  has 
taught  them  how  to  act  more  efficiently  together  for 
higher  values  than  merely  securing  more  butter  on 
their  bread.  But  you  are  in  danger  of  passing 
through  a  most  notable,  if  not  a  great  age,  with 
nothing  to  show  for  it  except  more  butter  on  peo¬ 
ple’s  bread.  Indeed,  whether  it  turns  out  to  have 
been  a  great  age  of  butter  or  a  great  age  of  life  de¬ 
pends  largely  upon  whether  religion,  art,  ethics  and 
philosophy  can  give  men,  through  your  wiser  social 
and  political  organization,  more  bountiful  inner 
values  of  beauty,  gentility  and  interest  for  which 
to  live. 


238 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


So  far,  not  only  have  yon  been  apathetic  toward 
these  higher  values  of  a  free-thinking,  free-rang¬ 
ing  philosophy,  but  the  church  has  leagued  it¬ 
self  with  you  to  prevent  men,  at  all  costs,  from  tap¬ 
ping  the  higher  levels  of  life,  which  science  and  the 
philosophy  growing  out  of  science  would  give  them. 
As  I  have  already  said,  you  do  not  trust  your  youth 
to  learn  anything  new.  You  are  afraid  to  trust  free 
intelligence,  lest  it  relieve  you  of  your  office.  The 
church  has  done  the  same  thing.  Indeed  it  casts  “a 
dim  religious  light’ ’  over  the  whole  range  of  mod¬ 
ern  problems.  So  far  it  has  not  solved  a  single 
large  human  problem.  It  is  still  the  sworn  enemy 
of  intellectual  liberty — the  only  liberty  there  is. 

Both  Catholic  and  Protestant  churches,  have,  in 
the  main,  used  all  the  threats  of  the  orthodox  hell  to 
prevent  men  from  thinking  freely  and  bravety 
about  life.  Science  has  given  men  a  new  universe, 
but  the  church  has  not  given  them  a  new  religion, 
nor  a  new  ethic  to  fit  it.  Science  has  given  men  elec¬ 
tric  cars,  hot  and  cold  water,  safety  razors,  chemical 
dyes,  and  both  chemical  and  biological  medicines, 
but  the  church  has  fought  every  effort  of  philoso¬ 
phy  to  teach  them  the  new  kind  of  life  by  which 
safety  razors  and  chemicals  have  sprung  from  the 
few  unique  intellects  and  imaginations  that  discov¬ 
ered  and  invented  them.  It  took  a  new  and  extra¬ 
ordinary  kind  of  life  to  find  these  things,  but  the 
church  has  threatened  men  with  hell  if  they  sought 
to  attain  that  rich,  free,  adventurous  life  for  them¬ 
selves.  Philosophy  is  tumbling  with  enterprise  and 

239 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


excitement  to  evaluate  for  men  this  new  world  to 
which  science  has  opened  wide  the  door,  but  the 
church  is  trembling  with  equal  excitement  lest  men 
enter  the  door  and  leave  it  behind.  They  may  do 
just  this,  unless  the  statesman  and  churchman  also 
enter  that  door  and  work  with  the  scientist  and  phi¬ 
losopher  to  enrich  not  only  industry  and  commerce 
but  also  human  life  with  the  nourishing  expanses 
of  this  new  and  open  world. 

If  we  throw  the  present  situation  upon  a  histori¬ 
cal  background,  according  to  Everett  Dean  Martin, 
three  things  in  man’s  intellectual  life  have  pro¬ 
gressed,  and  three  have  not.  Art,  philosophy  and 
science  have  all  progressed,  solely  because  freed  in¬ 
telligence  has  been  applied  to  them.  Morals,  reli¬ 
gion  and  politics  have  not  progressed  because  freed 
intelligence  has  scarcely  touched  them.  Careful 
scrutiny  might  reveal  here  and  there  minute  items 
of  progress  in  these,  but  they  have  not,  as  the  others 
have  been,  the  outstanding  things  that  have  charac¬ 
terized,  indeed  made,  great  ages  in  the  history  of 
man. 

In  fact,  the  chief  claim  of  religion  and  morals  is 
that  they  derive  from  more  than  mortal  wisdom,  and 
can  not  by  mortal  wisdom  be  advanced.  Finite 
minds  dare  not  tamper  with  something  directly  re¬ 
vealed  by  the  Infinite.  But,  as  I  have  tried  to  show 
you,  Sir,  morals  derive  not  from  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal,  but  from  the  finite  and  temporal,  that  is, 
the  effort  of  men  to  act  intelligently  together.  It 
should,  therefore,  be  the  one  thing  above  all  others 

240 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


to  which  intelligence  should  be  addressed  continu¬ 
ously  in  order  to  stimulate  growth,  change,  improve¬ 
ment.  Politics,  on  the  other  hand,  as  Mr.  Alleyne 
Ireland  has  shown,  has  derived  from  four  sources, 
namely,  fear,  superstition,  vanity  and  gullibility. 
First,  the  strong  man  ruled  by  inspiring  fear.  Sec¬ 
ond,  to  aid  him,  in  a  tight  place  he  had  to  take  in 
the  priest  which  added  superstition.  Third,  he  had 
to  take  in  the  nobles  which  added  vanity,  and 
fourth,  he  was  obliged  to  take  in  the  people  which 
added  gullibility.  Gullibility  in  government  is  now 
at  flood-tide  throughout  the  world.  Surely  these 
mundane  shores  never  had  to  endure  so  much  of  it 
at  any  one  time. 

But  all  this  need  not  create  in  you  supreme  un¬ 
easiness.  The  outcome  will  depend  upon  whether 
you  can  give  gullibility  the  right  kind  of  a  philoso¬ 
phy  of  life  to  swallow.  Its  capacity  to  swallow  in¬ 
ane  incredibilities  passes  belief.  Recently,  in  New 
York  City,  I  listened  for  an  hour  to  one  of  the  High 
Priests  of  Gullibility  lecturing  to  a  great  audience 
on  “The  Higher  Life.”  The  higher  his  life  soared, 
I  confess,  the  less  was  I  able  to  follow  it.  But  the 
audience  was  enthusiastic ;  consequently,  I  concluded 
that  my  lack  of  comprehension  was  due  to  my  not 
being  among  the  initiated.  Finally  the  speaker, 
striking  the  pose  of  Elijah  starting  heavenward, 
and  lowering  his  voice  to  a  solemnity  not  of  this 
world,  imparted  the  following  startling  informa¬ 
tion:  “We  are  at  last  standing,”  he  said,  “in  the 
realm  of  the  disliarmonic  unthinkables.  ”  The  audi- 

241 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ence  sat  breathless  for  a  moment  and  then,  as  the 
unthinkable  joys  of  this  disharmonic  realm  of  bliss 
dawned  upon  their  dazzled  vision,  they  burst  into 
ecstatic  applause. 

Now  while  these  were  extraordinarily  well- 
dressed  people  I  do  not  think  they  were  extraordi¬ 
narily  stupid.  I  think  they  represent  the  cream  of 
our  half-educated  gullibility.  They  are  the  people 
who  telepath  when  they  could  use  a  telephone,  and 
who  follow  hunches  when  they  could  easily 
ascertain  the  facts,  and  prefer  vague  guesses  to 
thinking  things  through.  But  the  hope  of  the  world, 
I  think,  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  can  be  truly  edu¬ 
cated.  I  feel  sure  that  if  our  education  can  be  ut¬ 
terly  freed  from  dogmatic  religion,  political  gang- 
stering  and  economic  domination,  that  enormous 
numbers  of  these  people  can  be  taught  in  childhood 
sound  logical  approach  to  the  world’s  idealisms  as 
well  as  its  realities. 

The  passion  of  these  people  for  real  knowledge 
is  positively  pathetic.  They  build  marble  temples 
and  hire  high  priced  speakers  to  provide  them  with 
expeditious  short-cuts  to  knowledge.  Many  of  these 
speakers  call  themselves  “  philosophers,”  and 
“psychologists.”  Especially  do  they  apply  to  this 
metaphysical  histrionics  the  magic  word  just  now 
for  conjuring  dollars  from  gullible  pockets,  “ap¬ 
plied  psychology.”  Some  even  assume  the  man¬ 
tle  of  prophecy.  But  they  are  little  short  of  educa¬ 
tional  gunmen  or  philosophical  popguns.  They  lack 
the  logical  coherence  of  ordered  thinking,  which 

242 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

alone  can  give  men  sound  philosophies — philoso¬ 
phies  that  enlighten  with  an  intelligible  realistic 
idealism,  instead  of  muddling  men’s  minds  with 
mystical  hallucinations  which  are  merely  the  froth- 
ings  of  their  own  intellectual  chaos.  Being  blind 
themselves,  they  lead  their  blind  but  trusting  follow¬ 
ers  into  the  ditch. 

I  am  convinced  that  at  the  touch  of  real  truth, 
the  eyes  of  average  people  could  be  opened  and 
trained  to  envisage  true  perspectives.  I  am 
convinced  that  they  will  accept  credibility  as  enthu¬ 
siastically  as  they  now  accept  incredibility;  that 
they  will  accept  a  philosophy  that  is  harmonic  and 
thinkable  as  readily  as  one  that  is  disharmonic  and 
unthinkable.  This  is  something  which  profoundly 
concerns  the  statesman.  For  ignorance  that  accepts 
its  ignorance  is  not  half  so  dangerous  as  half-edu¬ 
cated  gullibility  that  mistakes  itself  for  knowledge 
and  acts  upon  it.  Biot  and  revolution  are  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  half-education  that  mistook  itself  for 
knowledge  and  carried  it  into  action. 

And  to  you,  Sir,  nothing  is  more  pressing  and 
immediate  than  that  you  should  aid  the  philosopher 
in  throwing  wide  open  to  the  common  people  the 
doors  that  lead  into  the  great  philosophies  of  life 
and  reality  that  are  flooding  the  scientific  and  phil¬ 
osophic  wTorld.  These  philosophies  are  capable  of 
bringing  to  men  new  understandings  of  this  strange, 
all-pervasive  environment  which  science  has  sud¬ 
denly  thrust  upon  mankind. 

Unfortunately,  at  every  previous  period  of  his- 

243 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

tory  when  it  seemed  that  philosophy  was  just  about 
to  open  a  new  door  for  men  to  enter  into  a  true  in¬ 
tellectual  and  spiritual  as  well  as  ethical  liberty, 
democracy  on  the  one  hand,  and  dogmatic  faith  on 
the  other,  have  risen  and  hurled  them  back  into 
intellectual  night.  For  a  thousand  years,  following 
the  last  free-thinkers  of  the  Homan  world,  Seneca, 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  Cicero,  men  closed  their  minds 
and  wandered  in  darkness  through  those  weary 
centuries  when  faith  replaced  reason  and  authority 
usurped  logic.  And  I  warn  you,  Sir,  that  every 
time  that  free  philosophy  has  lost  its  hold  upon 
the  world,  political  civilization  has  gone  to  pieces. 
“Dogmatism,”  as  has  been  truly  said,  “is  the 
effort  to  make  the  living  faith  of  the  dead,  the 
dead  faith  of  the  living.”  And  if  the  statesman 
fail  to  provide  that  social  and  political  freedom 
which  enables  the  philosopher  to  teach  a  free 
and  open  philosophy  of  life  the  Fundamental¬ 
ists,  by  whatever  name  they  may  assume  to  cloak 
their  real  purpose,  will  destroy  every  new  phi¬ 
losophy  and  every  new  spiritual  and  ethical  discip¬ 
line  which  a  free  questioning  of  nature  may  build. 
And  when  they  do,  political  development  will  itself 
follow  into  the  night  of  that  dogmatism  where  its 
living  and  growing  faiths  will  be  replaced  by  faiths 
and  governments  that  satisfied  the  dead  ages  of  the 
world,  but  which  furnish  only  prisons  and  oppres¬ 
sion  for  enlightened  men.  When  dogmatic  faith, 
authority  and  mass  democracy  replaced  its  free  life 
and  philosophy,  there  happened  in  Rome  the  saddest 

244 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


thing  of  the  ancient  world.  The  people  lost  their 
way  to  the  baths  which  their  noble  forebears  had 
built  to  keep  them  clean,  and  forgot  even  their 
language,  so  that  they  could  not  read  the  inscrip¬ 
tions  that  told  them  what  these  buildings  were  for. 
And  should  the  living  faith  of  the  dead  take  pos¬ 
session  of  our  world  and  become  the  dead  faith  of 
the  living,  nature  has  no  reprieve  and  history  knows 
no  forgiveness.  Our  course  may  be  illuminated 
with  the  triumphs  of  electrical  invention,  we  may 
even  ride  into  the  night  in  ships  of  the  air,  but  dark¬ 
ness  will  settle  about  us  just  the  same.  If  man’s 
head  can  not  guide  his  heart,  then  his  heart  must  al¬ 
ways  beat  in  anguishing  darkness  because  his  eyes 
refused  to  see  ahead  when  they  could. 

Philosophy,  then,  is  a  prime  concern  of  the 
statesman.  When  you  think  it  is  something  remote 
from  “human  nature’s  daily  food,”  you  are  think¬ 
ing  of  its  classic,  metaphysical,  dialectic  and  episto- 
mological  puzzles.  You  might  remember  that  even 
these  kept  our  Puritan  forefathers  in  a  high,  even 
if  futile,  state  of  intellectual  excitement.  But  the 
heart  of  the  commonest  man  is  always  crying  for 
some  key  with  which  he  can  open  the  mysteries, 
something  he  can  rely  upon  to  test  life  by.  And  the 
key  he  finds,  the  key  which  his  superiors  give  him — 
that  is  his  philosophy.  As  that  occasionally  wise 
man,  Mr.  Chesterton,  says,  “The  most  important 
thing  about  a  man  is  his  philosophy  of  life.”  “No 
one  of  us  can  get  along,”  says  Professor  James, 
“without  the  far-flashing  beams  of  light  which 

245 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

philosophy  sends  over  the  world’s  perspectives.” 
And  with  what  pervasive  immediacy  it  should  be 
borne  in  upon  statesmanship  that  it  should  link  it¬ 
self  with  those  gallant  minds  and  intrepid  spirits 
that,  with  utter  contempt  either  of  authority  or  of 
what  men  thought  or  did  yesterday,  are  seeking  to 
give  us  a  true  perspective  of  this  tumultuous  en¬ 
vironment  which,  like  the  Eevelations  of  St.  John, 
has  been  suddenly  let  down  out  of  Heaven  I 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Philosophical  Reconstruction — con¬ 
tinued 

I  am  not  assuming,  Your  Excellency,  to  decide 
here,  for  you  or  any  one,  the  truth  or  untruth  of  any 
one  of  the  many  philosophies  of  men.  Many  of 
them  are  true.  None  of  them  founded  upon  intelli¬ 
gence  is  entirely  false.  I  am  merely  pleading  for 
philosophy’s  privilege  in  a  democracy.  I  do  not 
know  what  philosophy  is  true.  I  only  know  that  un¬ 
fettered  philosophic  thought  is  the  only  thing  that 
can  lead  us  to  the  things  that  are  true.  And  I  am 
pleading  for  the  importance  and  influence  of  truth, 
and  that  it  may  be  in  our  time  bravely  lifted  up  for 
all  men. 

However,  if  I  am  to  trust  my  extremely  diffident 
interpretation  of  Prof.  John  Dewey,  science  and  the 
critical  speculation  that  has  come  into  the  world 
with  it  have  given  three  great  new  trends  to  phi¬ 
losophy,  all  of  which,  I  think,  are  of  great  impor¬ 
tance  to  statecraft. 

First,  philosophy  has  changed  as  to  its  theory 
of  knowledge — the  very  nature  of  the  knowing  pro¬ 
cesses  of  the  mind.  Biology  has  made  this  contri¬ 
bution.  From  the  old  notion  that  knowledge  was 
built  up  out  of  independent  sensations,  that  is,  that 

247 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  senses  were  the  gateways  to  knowledge,  biology 
has  contributed  the  new  conception  that  knowledge 
is  behavior,  the  reaction,  the  “ hitting  back”  of  a 
living  organism  upon  its  environment.  Knowledge 
thus  becomes  the  active,  operative  experience  of  an 
organism  carrying  out  the  rich  possibilities  of  its 
inherent  structure.  Not  to  go  into  technical  jargon, 
all  the  old  psychology  that  underlaid  both  the  ra¬ 
tionalism  of  the  rationalist  and  the  empiricism  of 
the  empiricist  is  thus  so  completely  exploded  that 
we  can  hardly  realize  what  has  become  of  it. 

Second,  this  change  as  to  the  nature  of  knowl¬ 
edge  has  brought  enormous  changes  in  our  concep¬ 
tions  as  to  the  nature  of  truth,  as  to  what  truth  is 
and  what  is  true.  We  find  that  truth  is,  in  the 
belief  of  most  philosophers,  merely  trustworthy  ex¬ 
perience.  Indeed,  we  find  that  truth  and  the  way  we 
gain  knowledge  are  quite  bound  together.  The  old 
notion  of  a  realm  of  unchangeable  truth  out  in 
the  sky  somewhere,  has  become  transformed  into  a 
conception  of  truth  as  working,  practical,  verifiable 
experience.  Thus  the  old  battle  between  the  real 
and  ideal,  subject  and  object,  experience  and  reason, 
noumenon  and  phenomenon  have  become  strangely 
obsolete  because  they  are  seen  to  have  no  practical 
consequence. 

Third,  this  changed  view  of  the  nature  of  know¬ 
ing  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  nature  of  what  we 
can  know  or  truth  on  the  other,  has  changed  three- 
fourths  of  the  problems  with  which  philosophy  is 
concerned.  It  has  brought  philosophy  down  out  of 

248 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  clouds.  Its  problems  have  become  the  problems 
of  this  world,  the  practical,  the  here  and  now. 
Truth  is  no  longer  conceived  of  as  some  mystical 
stuff  to  be  apprehended  only  by  a  “  synthetic 
faculty  of  super-empirical  reason,”  as  the  ration¬ 
alists  thought,  nor  merely  sensations  bound  togeth¬ 
er  in  particular  experiences  which  tell  us  nothing  of 
universals,  as  the  empiricists  thought.  Truth  is 
found  to  be  merely  “experimental  intelligence,”  an 
“intelligent  administering  of  experience,  an  affair 
primarily  of  doing,”  “intelligently  thought-out  pos¬ 
sibilities  of  the  existent  world  which  may  be  used  as 
methods  for  making  over  and  improving  it.”  Phi¬ 
losophy  thus  ceases  to  be  an  “intellectual  somnam¬ 
bulism”  and  becomes  a  new  method  of  facing  “the 
great  moral  and  social  defects  from  which  human¬ 
ity  suffers,  ...  of  clearing  up  the  exact  nature  of 
these  evils  and  developing  a  clear  idea  of  better 
social  possibilities.”  In  short,  philosophy  in  this 
new  sense  seeks  to  give  men  “an  idea  or  ideal 
which,  instead  of  expressing  the  notion  of  another 
world  or  some  far-away  unrealizable  goal,  would 
be  used  as  a  method  of  understanding  and  rectify¬ 
ing  specific  social  ills”  in  this  present,  real  world 
about  us. 

This  is  a  tremendous  thing.  The  history  of  man 
has  been  mostly  the  history  of  his  ideas  of  truth  and 
the  world  he  lives  in.  And  modem  philosophy  is 
introducing  us  into  totally  new  ideas  of  both.  Some 
of  these  new  conceptions  have  led  many  of  our 
ablest  minds  to  a  thoroughgoing  mechanistic  inter- 

249 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


pretation  of  life  and  the  universe.  Some  have  been 
led  to  a  somewhat  more  flexible  pragmatic  natural¬ 
ism,  others  to  various  philosophies  of  relativity. 
But  the  prime  point  is  that  at  last  truth  itself  is 
found  to  be  merely  a  way  of  apprehending  and  com¬ 
prehending  the  universe,  and  how  men  can  bend  a 
natural  universe,  without  aim  or  ideal  in  itself,  to 
their  own  aims  and  ideals.  “Pure  Being,’ ’  “Per¬ 
fection,”  “The  Absolute”  and  the  like,  of  which  our 
disharmonic  unthinkables,  previously  diagnosed, 
talk  so  glibly,  are  in  this  view  merely  thought-out 
possibilities  of  man’s  own  perfecting  of  himself  and 
becoming  something  better — that  is,  conceiving 
finer  values  and  realizing  them  in  experience.  It  all 
takes  man  out  of  the  comfortable  closed  world, 
where  he  could  lean  on  eternal  truth,  and  throws 
him  out  naked  and  alone  into  an  open  world  where 
truth  is  not  something  handed  to  him  gratis,  but 
where  truth  is  something  to  be  achieved,  a  world,  in 
fact,  of  mental  daring  and  fearless  experimentation 
with  the  universe  and  with  his  own  life. 

Now  it  is  a  prime  problem  of  practical  state¬ 
craft  as  to  just  what  J ohn  Smith  would  do,  should  he 
find  himself  suddenly  hurled  out  into  this  unfenced 
world.  The  philosopher  can  stand  a  world  with¬ 
out  a  fence  around  it,  and  as  cold  as  starlight.  But 
Smith  longs  for  visible  safeguards,  and  the  warmth 
of  the  sunshine.  Many  times  when  the  esoteric 
philosophers  and  religious  teachers  have  believed 
there  was  no  such  world,  they  have  told  him  there 
was#  and  furnished  him  ritualistic  fences  about  it  to 

250 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


convince  him  of  its  truth  and  solidity,  in  order  to 
exploit  him  more  easily.  Smith  may  not  have  the 
high  courage  to  endure  philosophic  fear.  For  it 
was  a  fine  remark  of  Professor  James  that  “No 
man  can  speak  of  life  who  has  not  felt  the  fear  of 
life. ? ’  Surely  the  optimist  can  not  speak  of  life:  he 
has  never  known  its  abysmal  depths.  No  more  can 
the  pessimist  speak  of  life:  he  has  never  known  its 
perilous  heights.  Nor  can  the  dogmatist  speak  of 
]ife ;  he  has  never  known  spiritual  liberty.  Only  he 
who  has  lived ,  whether  cowboy  or  philosopher,  can 
speak  of  life.  It  was  Horace  Walpole,  I  think,  who 
said  he  “would  rather  the  future  would  inquire  why 
they  had  not  built  a  monument  to  him,  than  to  in¬ 
quire  why  they  had.”  Optimist,  pessimist  and  dog¬ 
matist  can  have  but  one  reason  for  monuments — 
that  they  died.  But  only  he  who  has  adventured 
with  life,  fought  his  way  sword  in  hand  into  its 
forbidden  realities  can  have  a  monument  because 
he  lived. 

It  was  this  sense  of  truth  and  life  in  which  the 
poet  Lowell,  in  perhaps  the  noblest  note  ever 
reached  in  American  song,  celebrates  the  un return¬ 
ing  brave  of  our  Civil  War. 

“Many  loved  Truth,  and  lavished  life’s  best  oil 
Amid  the  dust  of  books,  to  find  her, 

Content  at  last,  for  guerdon  of  their  toil, 

With  the  cast  mantle  she  hath  left  behind  her. 
Many  in  sad  faith  sought  for  her, 

Many  with  crossed  hands  sighed  for  her; 

But,  these,  our  brothers,  fought  for  her, 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


At  life’s  dear  peril  wrought  for  her, 

So  loved  her  that  they  died  for  her, 

Tasting  the  raptured  fleetness 
Of  her  divine  completeness — 

The  pragmatist  might  add,  without  quibbling,  in 
the  words  of  Matthew  Arnold,  that  truth’s  “divine 
completeness,”  as  Lowell  plainly  recognizes,  was 
not  “a  having  and  a  being,  but  an  eternal  becom¬ 
ing.”  To  the  naturalistic  pragmatist,  at  least, 
truth  is  not,  as  Mr.  Bryan  conceives  it,  an  eternal 
resting  on  the  bosom  of  God,  but  something  to  be 
hourly  achieved  at  the  very  peril  of  losing  the  uni¬ 
verse.  True,  he  who  fares  forth  from  the  Rock  of 
Ages,  cleft  once  and  for  all  for  him,  will  find  this 
search  for  truth  an  arduous  enterprise.  He  will 
miss  many  of  the  old  comforts  of  home.  He  will 
miss  Mr.  Sunday  and  Mr.  Bryan’s  old  armchair  of 
faith  in  the  eternal  verities,  and  the  bedrock  truths 
of  Fundamentalism.  He  will  miss  the  flowery  beds 
of  ease,  the  salvation  handed  to  him  gratis,  because 
some  one  else’s  sacrifice  and  blood  and  pierced  side 
has  atoned  for  his  sins  and  brought  forgiveness  for 
his  misdemeanors.  Nature  knows  no  forgiveness, 
but  only  glorious  possibilities  of  new  experience  to 
every  soul  that  really  thirsteth  after  righteousness, 
and  will  dare  the  experience  necessary  to  gain  it. 
She  knows  no  atonement,  but  only  the  use  of  present 
material  means  for  realizations  of  new  and  always 
perilous  possibility. 

For  the  high  philosophy  of  science  gives  a  man 
no  resting  place  in  the  everlasting  arms,  but  in 

252 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

its  stead,  the  gay  enterprise  of  breaking  open  the 
door  to  every  mystery,  and  gaining  new  mysteries 
deeper  than  any  of  which  the  somnambulistic  mys¬ 
tic  ever  dreamed.  He  knows  no  peace  except  the 
peace  of  abandoned  daring,  no  salvation  except  the 
rapturous  gaiety  of  utter  adventure.  This,  to  him,  is 
the  peace  that  passeth  understanding,  because  it 
gives  him  new  understanding,  the  virile  understand¬ 
ing  of  the  happy  warrior  in  the  forgetful  moments 
of  battle.  This  was  the  kind  of  peace  that  came  to 
Jesus,  and  that  came  to  Nietzsche,  bravest  soul  since 
Jesus — a  soul  gloriously  wrong  perhaps  in  many 
details  of  technical  knowledge,  but  gloriously  right 
in  his  fearless  questioning  of  the  universe,  and  his 
own  soul.  Truth,  to  the  new  philosophy,  is  not  some 
eternal  sunshine — some  place  4  ‘ where  it  is  always 
afternoon/’  some  raptured  sweetness  of  divine 
completeness,  except  in  the  sense  of  a  raptured  be¬ 
comingness  of  a  new  day  with  all  its  possibility  and 
peril. 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 


The  Duty  of  Philosophical  Reconstruction — con¬ 
cluded 

Within  the  past  generation  there  has  come,  as  I 
have  noted,  especially  into  British  and  American 
philosophy,  an  increasing  tendency  toward  natural¬ 
ism.  Let  us  see  how  some  of  its  concepts  may  strike 
John  Smith  when  he  first  hears  of  them.  I  am  not 
concerned  at  this  moment  with  whether  they  are 
true  or  not. 

In  this  philosophy  of  naturalism,  the  universe 
stands  revealed  at  last  in  all  its  gaunt  nakedness,  as 
a  mere  machine  without  sympathy  or  purpose.  Man 
is  found  to  be  a  brother  not  only  to  the  brute  but  to 
the  clod  and  crystal.  He  sweeps  for  a  brief  moment 
round  his  little  orbit,  and  passes  into  the  trackless 
void  with  the  same  mechanical  precision  as  the 
stars.  Life,  itself,  instead  of  being  the  warm  and 
pulsing  thing  which  we  have  thought,  is  believed  to 
be  a  mere  phenomenon  of  matter.  Indeed,  matter 
itself  has  disappeared,  and  the  mechanist  finds 
nothing  but  force — a  world  of  electrical  points 
which,  by  their  infinite  permutations  and  combina¬ 
tions  produce  that  transitory  illusion  which  we  call 
life. 

That  this  is  not  the  view  of  insane  men,  but  one 

254 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

of  the  loftiest  and  most  daring  adventures  of  the 
human  mind,  is  in  evidence  on  every  hand,  and  it  is 
laying  its  hold  mightily  not  only  upon  many  phi¬ 
losophers,  but  is  being  taught  as  a  more  common¬ 
place  by  many  teachers  in  the  colleges  of  America 
and  northern  Europe.  Of  course  not  all  philoso¬ 
phies  which  have  grown  out  of  modem  science  are 
mechanistic,  nor  do  they  all  deny  the  existence  of 
“spirit,”  or  a  spiritual  world.  Many  philosophers 
still  find  a  world  of  ideal  values  above  and  beyond 
science,  which  they  regard  as  being  as  truly  real  as 
the  findings  of  science  itself,  but  scarcely  any  of 
them  find  any  place  for  the  old  crass  spiritualism 
or  supernaturalism  by  which  the  masses  of  men 
have  lived  from  the  days  of  charms,  totems  and 
ghosts. 

For  instance,  Nietzsche  finds  ultimate  reality  in 
the  will  and  could  hardly  be  classed  as  a  mechanist. 
Nevertheless,  he  proclaims  in  Zarathustra  that 
“God  is  dead”  and  in  His  place  a  true  world  picture 
has  nothing  better  to  offer  to  the  common  man  as  a 
present  help  in  time  of  trouble  than  the  barren 
conception  of  a  super-man  who  can  take  care  of 
his  own  troubles.  Bertrand  Russell,  George  Santa¬ 
yana,  Viscount  Haldane,  Earl  Balfour,  and  many 
others,  while  holding  different  technical  philosoph- 
ical  positions,  yet  give  us  well-nigh  as  dismal  a  pic¬ 
ture  of  man’s  place  in  the  universe. 

Dr.  Irwin  Edman,  of  Columbia  University,  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  rising  generation  of 
pragmatists,  boMly,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  brave* 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ly,  teaches  his  students  that  “man  is  a  mere  acci¬ 
dent” — the  most  interesting  and  self-interested  ac¬ 
cident,  no  doubt,  which  has  yet  happened  to  matter 
but,  nevertheless,  an  accident;  that  “immortality  is 
a  sheer  illusion,”  and  that  “there  is  practically  no 
evidence  for  the  existence  of  God.”  Indeed,  God, 
heaven,  immortality,  as  John  Smith  thinks  of  them 
and  as  he  and  his  family  worship,  sing,  pray,  and 
build  churches  to  them,  are  well-nigh  eliminated  from 
modern  scientific  thinking  or  critical  philosophy. 

Everett  Dean  Martin,  Director  of  Cooper  Union 
in  New  York  City,  who  conducts  the  largest  class  in 
philosophy  in  the  world,  and  probably  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  unless  it  was  Abelard,  with  his  twelve 
thousand  students,  can  not  be  classed  as  a  mechanist. 
Yet  he  informs  his  students,  many  of  them 
labor  leaders  of  the  most  earnest  type,  that  “  religion 
is  primarily  a  defense  mechanism”  which  man  has 
built  up  subjectively;  “a  compensatory  fiction  for 
an  inner  feeling  of  inferiority,”  “a  device  for  im¬ 
porting  symbols  into  a  world  of  fact ;  ”  all  not  with 
a  view  of  finding  reality,  but  of  continually  “keep¬ 
ing  up  his  courage  with  a  picture  of  a  universe  run 
in  his  private  interest — a  universe  as  he  would  like 
to  have  it.”  He  finds  religious  symbols  such  as 
salvation,  the  Heavenly  Father,  angels,  devils  and 
the  like  to  be  “different  in  degree  but  not  in  kind 
from  the  Freudian  defense  mechanisms  of  the  para¬ 
noiac,”  an  effort  of  man  to  create  a  purely  imagin¬ 
ary  world  which  will  furnish  him  an  escape  from  the 
hard  realities  of  life. 


256 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

We  hear  Prof.  John  Broadus  Watson,  of  Johns 
Hopkins,  leader  of  the  behavioristic  school  of  psy¬ 
chology,  telling  his  students  that  “freedom  of  the 
will  has  been  knocked  into  a  cocked  hat,,?  and  that 
such  things  as  the  soul,  consciousness,  God  and  im¬ 
mortality  are  merely  mistakes  of  the  older  psycho¬ 
logy.  These  are  only  random  examples.  It  is,  I 
think,  safe  perhaps  to  assert  that  a  majority  of  all 
biologists,  psychologists,  physicists  and  chemists, 
and  critical  thinkers  generally,  are  either  thorough¬ 
going  mechanists,  or  have  espoused  some  form  of 
pragmatic  naturalism,  or  new  realism;  or  else  they 
advocate  some  form  of  pragmatic  idealism  which 
finds  little  or  no  place  for  the  old  homey  supernatur¬ 
alism  which  has  comforted  Smith  for  ages.  One 
could  at  least  run  over  many  great  names  who  have 
come  out  boldly  for  at  least  a  non-supernaturalistic 
view. 

A  few  biologists,  such  as  J.  A.  Thomson, 
author  of  Animate  Nature  and  Outlines  of  Science , 
and  Hans  Driesch  of  Germany,  are  still  valiantly 
holding  the  old  citadel  of  vitalism  and  a  more  spir¬ 
itual  view  of  the  world.  Also  many  of  the  older 
philosophers,  with  perhaps  Bergson  leading,  are 
launching  some  of  the  most  brilliant  dialectic  in  all 
philosophical  history  to  prove  that  science  itself  is 
but  an  instrument  for  adjustment  to  environment, 
and  that,  on  the  basis  of  intuition,  philosophy  may 
establish  a  world  of  spiritual  values.  But  for  all  this, 
unvarnished  naturalism  seems  to  be  rising  in  tide  and 
volume  throughout  the  thinking  world.  If  I  am 

257 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

wrong  as  to  this,  nevertheless  the  old  comforting, 
home-made  universe  of  Smith  has,  I  am  sure,  almost 
completely  vanished  from  the  purview  of  men  of 
critical  thought,  at  least  those  who  have  had  a  thor¬ 
ough,  modern,  scientific  education. 

But  I  repeat  that  I  am  not  concerned  here  with 
the  truth  or  untruth  of  these  various  pictures  of  the 
universe,  life,  reality  and  destiny.  I  may  not  have 
even  expressed  in  perfect  metaphysical  terminol¬ 
ogy  and  with  dialectical  nicety  the  various  view¬ 
points  as  the  philosophers  would  express  them  were 
they  to  talk  with  Smith  themselves.  I  am  not  a  pro¬ 
fessional  philosopher,  but  merely  a  student  of  biol¬ 
ogy,  looking  on  with  profound  interest  as  the  new 
philosophies  growing  out  of  biology  and  science 
generally  are  going  by.  What  does  concern  me  pro¬ 
foundly,  however,  is  their  social,  economic  and  poli¬ 
tical  effects. 

The  social  and  political  impact  of  naturalism, 
for  instance,  has  already  been  enormous  and  unmis¬ 
takable.  As  far  back  as  Bentham  and  Mill,  it  shot 
its  cold  and  comfortless  gleams  through  political 
economy  and  social  science.  It  animated  Spencer’s 
«  sociology,  psychology  and  system  of  ethics.  Prior 
to  1914,  it  had  swept  into  industry,  profoundly  af- 
j  fected  both  capitalist  and  laborer,  given  its  im¬ 
pulse  to  nationalism,  and  colored  the  entire  picture 
of  world  politics.  It  is  probable  that  the  future  his¬ 
torian  will  find  the  World  War  was  a  conflict  of  two 
philosophies,  not  as  President  Wilson  thought, 
merely  philosophies  of  politics,  industry  and  the 
State,  but  philosophies  of  life  and  the  nature  of 

258 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


man  and  the  universe  itself  which  lay  behind  these 
conflicting  views  of  political  and  social  organiza¬ 
tion.  Some  of  our  ablest  psychologists  believe  that 
the  despair  which  settles  down  upon  average  minds 
which  have  not  been  prepared  for  it  by  a  proper 
education  in  youth,  when  the  consolations  of  reli¬ 
gion  and  a  future  life  of  compensation  are  swept 
away,  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  four  of  the  most 
outstanding  psychological  phenomena  of  our  times: 
first,  the  increase  in  crime,  second,  the  increase  of 
suicide,  third,  the  increase  of  insanity,  and  fourth, 
the  increase  of  social  unrest. 

Now,  the  inescapable  question  which  western 
civilization  faces  even  in  the  opinions  of  many  of 
these  philosophers  themselves,  is  this:  4 ‘What  is  the 
man  in  the  street — John  Smith — going  to  do  when 
he  wakes  up  to  what  they  at  least  believe  are  the 
facts  ?”  When  Smith  finds  out,  for  instance,  that 
life  is  as  George  Santayana  puts  it,  “a  little  lumin¬ 
ous  meteor  in  an  infinite  abyss  of  nothingness,  a 
rocket  fired  on  a  dark  night,”  a  fleeting  moment  of 
music,  warmth  and  color  between  two  eternities  of 
silence,  what  is  he  going  to  do  about  it!  Or,  what 
would  happen  if  Smith,  himself,  should  turn  phi¬ 
losopher?  Philosophy  is  the  highest  effort  of  man 
to  find  reality  and  adjust  himself  to  it — to  teach 
himself  what  to  do  with  the  universe.  And  if  he, 
Smith,  finds  out  that  the  universe  is  not  remotely 
built  in  his  interest,  how  is  he  going  to  make  that 
adjustment?  What  is  he  going  to  do  with  that  sort 
of  a  universe? 

The  philosophers  themselves  say  candidly  they 

259 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


do  not  know.  They  express  only  hopes,  sugges¬ 
tions  and  even  despairs.  For  ages,  Smith  has  faced 
the  hardships  of  life,  its  glaring  social  injustices,  its 
bitter  pains  and  disappointments,  “the  slings  and 
arrows  of  outrageous  fortune,”  either  because  of  or 
at  least  along  with  the  comforting  assurance  given 
him  by  his  intellectual  superiors  of  “something 
after  death,”  another  world  where  he,  too,  would 
come  in  for  some  of  the  prizes  of  life,  where  he,  too, 
would  walk  streets  of  gold  and  dwell  in  “mansions 
not  made  with  hands. ?  ’ 

Now,  if  Smith,  as  a  laboring  man,  for  instance, 
finds  this  is  all  pure  fol-de-rol,  is  he  going  to  go  on 
living  out  docilely  his  little  round  of  life  on  black 
bread,  beans  and  onions,  and  let  himself  be  ex¬ 
ploited  for  the  benefit  of  a  few  biologically  selected 
specimens  of  protoplasmic  mechanism,  who  (or  per¬ 
haps  the  mechanist  would  say  which)  a  purely  me¬ 
chanical,  selective  process  has  determined  are  his 
“superiors”;  mehanisms  in  whom,  (or,  perhaps  the 
mechanist  again  would  say,  in  which)  he  has  no  in¬ 
terest  and  who,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  can  have 
only  a  lifetime  interest  in  him?  Will  he,  as  San¬ 
tayana  subtly  argues,  calmly  accept  the  fact  that  it 
is  only  in  the  light  of  death — this  eternal  death — 
that  we  can  value  life  truly,  and  that  only  “the  dark 
background  which  death  supplies  can  bring  out  the 
tender  colors  of  life  in  all  their  purity”?  Will  he 
not  say  this  is  simply  more  esoteric  fol-de-rol  thrown 
out  by  the  esoteric  circle  to  fool  him  into  docility 
and  exploitations? 


260 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

Plainly,  in  all  this  literature,  there  are  grounds 
for  a  real  concern  for  civilization.  It  might  lose  its 
spiritual  driving  power.  The  philosophical  dilem¬ 
ma  can  not  be  answered  (and  the  answer  comfort¬ 
ably  quoted  by  either  the  churches  or  the  common 
man,  or  by  the  spiritualistic  philosopher)  with  the 
nonchalant  statement  which  up  to  a  generation  ago 
did  duty  in  bringing  confusion  into  the  scientific 
camp:  “You  are  not  philosophers  or  you  would 
know  of  inner  realities  of  experience  which  your  in¬ 
struments  can  not  find.”  Nor  can  the  dilemma  be 
met  by  the  retort  of  scientific  men:  “You  are 
not  scientists,  or  you  would  know  that  science  does 
bring  us  the  most  serviceable  concepts  of  reality 
to  which  the  human  mind  has  attained,  or  probably 
ever  will  attain.”  In  this  past  generation  many 
scientists  have  become  philosophers  and  nearly  all 
philosophers  have  been  trained  in  science  and,  as 
never  before,  all  are  turning  their  eyes  earnestly 
upon  the  effects  of  their  philosophies  on  social  and 
political  problems.  We  can  not  escape  from  the 
fact  that  these  effects  are  going  to  be  immense  and 
permanent. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  the  philosophical,  but  the 
ethical,  social  and  political  dilemmas  that  now  con¬ 
cern  us.  Should  a  philosophy  of  naturalism,  or  any 
sort  of  free-thinking  pragmatism,  lay  hold  of  the 
masses,  and  become  a  commonplace  in  Smith’s  edu¬ 
cation,  especially  the  education  of  his  children,  sev¬ 
eral  things,  it  seems  obvious  to  me,  are  bound  to 
happen.  Some  of  them  may  happen  to  one  section 

261 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


of  the  population  and  some  to  another.  But  it  is 
fairly  likely  that  there  will  be  a  great  major 
trend  in  some  particular  direction,  and  to  influence 
that  trend  is,  plainly,  the  duty  of  any  renaissance — 
indeed,  its  chief  political  and  social  objective.  To 
rouse  and  bring  about  a  renaissance  by  talking, 
writing,  thinking — spreading  propaganda  about  it, 
if  you  will — is  evidently  every  thinking  man’s  high¬ 
est  present-day  opportunity  for  social  service.  A 
renaissance  is  clearly  not  a  matter  for  mere  intel¬ 
lectual  curiosity  on  the  part  of  a  few.  It  is  a  matter 
of  supreme  necessity  to  save  the  social  order  from 
the  possibility  that  its  cohesive  forces  may  let  go  in 
general  anarchy. 

The  dullest  mind,  Your  Excellency,  must  see 
that  if  the  naturalistic  philosophy  or  any  philos¬ 
ophy  without  a  personal  God — heaven,  immortality 
and  supernaturalism — in  it,  takes  possession  of 
the  man  in  the  street,  if  Smith  becomes  convinced 
that  this  life  is  really  all,  that  this  is  his  last  and 
only  chance  at  it,  that  he  will  react  largely  as  he  is 
educated  to  react ,  and  that,  consequently,  it  is  at 
this  precise  point  that  education  must  make  its 
chief  attack,  in  order  to  adjust  his  mind  to  such  a 
radically  changed  world,  give  satisfactions  to  his 
heart  as  well  as  his  head,  and  give  him  new  grounds 
for  hope  and  courage.  For  if  hope  and  courage  go 
out  of  the  lives  of  common  men  it  is  all  up  with  so¬ 
cial  and  political  civilization. 

One  of  four  trends,  I  think,  is  certain  to  sweep 
over  the  minds  of  men.  They  may  all  be  present 

262 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


and  overlap  but  some  one  of  them,  I  believe,  will  rise 
supreme,  and  give  color,  life  and  character  to  the 
age. 

First,  men  may  espouse  a  vulgar  Epicureanism, 
mixed  with  stoicism.  Smith  may  argue  that  since 
death  ends  all,  and  the  universe  is  not  concerned 
with  him  personally,  with  ethical  values  or  human 
personalities,  then  let  us  eat,  drink  and  be  merry; 
and  he  may  seek  in  rank  and  crass  sensationalism — 
the  mere  satisfaction  of  his  senses — the  solution  of 
life,  and  the  escape  from  its  dilemmas. 

Second,  Smith  may  plunge  into  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  revolution,  seeking  to  grab  whatever  he  may  of 
the  values  which  a  more  sober  human  order  has 
created,  a  social  and  moral  Bolshevism,  which  rec¬ 
ognizes  no  values  in  leadership  or  social  order  and 
whose  motto  shall  be,  “Let  the  Devil  take  the  hind¬ 
most.’ ?  Obviously,  such  a  result  will  plunge  the 
world  into  a  new  Dark  Ages  of  superstition  and 
dogmatic  faith.  The  Fundamentalist  movement  is 
the  chief  force,  in  my  judgment,  to-day  trending 
toward  just  such  a  denouement. 

Third,  men  may  go  in  for  a  more  passionate  es- 
theticism,  a  worship  of  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  the 
losing  of  life  in  a  higher  Epicureanism,  a  higher 
sensationalism;  the  living  of  life  for  its  higher 
emotional  values,  without — in  Smith’s  mind,  at 
least — an  ethical  philosophy  or  an  intellectual  back¬ 
ground.  It  is  perhaps  only  those  who  have  felt  the 
depth,  insistence  and  permanence  of  the  esthetic 
appeal,  as  one  finds  it  in  Schopenhauer,  or  still  wider 

263 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


and  deeper  in  Benedetto  Croce,  who  will  feel  that 
such  a  passion  might  become  the  dominating  note  in 
a  truly  great  civilization. 

Fourth,  it  may  result  in  a  new  and  higher  syn¬ 
thesis  resulting  in  a  true  liberalism,  a  true  freeing 
of  the  human  spirit,  a  genuinely  noble  esthetic  and 
spiritual  release,  coupled  with  a  deeper  devotion  to 
the  social  and  political  good  as  the  only  way  to  at¬ 
tain  the  highest,  widest  and  deepest  experience  of 
this  brief  fever  of  living,  loving  and  dying.  It  might 
result  in  an  organization  of  society  and  politics  not 
as  mechanized  industry  has  given  us  for  power, 
pleasure  and  profit,  but  for  human  values,  a  devel¬ 
opment  of  all  that  is  unique,  free  and  truly  wonder¬ 
ful  in  the  personality  and  spirit  of  each  man  and 
woman;  an  organization  of  society  for  the  partici¬ 
pation  of  every  man  and  Woman  and  little  child  in 
the  ever-accumulating  treasure  of  the  one  common 
life.  It  may  give  us  a  civilization  not  of  power  but 
of  values,  a  civilization  of  beauty,  gaiety  and  happi¬ 
ness;  of  social  tenderness,  sweetness  and  gentility; 
of  intellectual  and  spiritual  adventure,  such  as  did 
characterize  the  old  Renaissance  and  “the  most 
high  and  palmy  state  of  Rome”  and  Greece,  and 
those  other  few  precious  moments  of  history  when 
society  thought  of  men  as  persons  and  not  as 
masses. 

It  is  the  latter  conception  to  which  any  renais¬ 
sance  of  western  civilization,  which  Glenn  Frank 
and  some  Italian  and  English  thinkers  believe  is  ap¬ 
proaching,  must  address  itself.  While  I  have  spoken 

264 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


of  the  literature  of  naturalism,  or  any  open  view  of 
life  and  the  universe,  as  being  a  literature  of  de¬ 
spair,  I  have  done  so  merely  because  that  is  the  first 
reaction  of  the  man  who  has  been  schooled  in  super¬ 
naturalism.  Because  he  has  not  learned  a  new  cour¬ 
age,  and  seen  new  objectives  and  sources  of  comfort 
and  inspiration,  greater  than  those  of  his  old  arm¬ 
chair  world ;  because  he  has  not  completely  oriented 
himself  in  this  new  and,  as  the  philosophers  believe, 
far  happier  world,  and  one  more  fruitful  in  nourish¬ 
ing  experience,  he  sees  in  it  nothing  but  blackness 
and  horror.  He  is  not  able  all  at  once  to  stand  what 
John  Burroughs  called  the  “  cosmic  chill.  ”  As  Mar¬ 
tin  puts  it,  he  can  not,  without  a  more  rational  edu¬ 
cation,  stand  a  universe  without  the  supernatural — 
without  a  Heavenly  Father  who  rewards  him  when 
he  is  good,  and  a  Devil  who  punishes  him  when  he  is 
bad.  It  is  a  grave  question,  indeed,  if  men,  without 
further  schooling,  can  stand  a  universe  without  a 
Devil  in  it.  Men  want  a  super-universe,  peopled  with 
anthropomorphic  personalities,  to  lean  upon,  one 
which  with  its  Devil  accounts  for  evil,  and  yet  one 
which  they  can  make  friendly  to  their  personal  in¬ 
terests  by  good  deeds,  sacrifice  and  special  plead¬ 
ing.  If  they  wake  up  to  find  this  swept  away,  plain¬ 
ly  it  is  the  task  of  any  renaissance  to  teach  them 
to  build  an  endurable  universe  out  of  the  materials 
which  naturalism  teaches  them  is  their  only  home. 

That  universe,  if  it  brings  men  a  courageous 
self-reliance  instead  of  a  reliance  upon  some  super¬ 
world  must  be  one  of  finer  human  relationships, 

265 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


deeper  human  insights,  wiser  industrial  and  social 
organization,  richer  human  goods  and  higher  ethical 
values  than  any  which  men  have  ever  before  con¬ 
structed.  If  there  is  to  be  no  home  in  some  future 
realm  where  the  ills  of  this  one  are  to  be  righted,  and 
men  live  happily  forever,  they  will  either  go  into  a 
moral  and  spiritual  smash-up,  or  else  do  what  plain 
common  sense  would  dictate,  set  about  at  once 
building  for  themselves,  and  with  their  own  hands, 
finer,  richer  and  more  stately  mansions  for  their 
souls  in  this. 

If  one  has  the  patience  and  wit  to  think  his  way 
through  the  mechanistic  or  any  realistic  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  the  universe,  whether  he  espouses  it  or  not, 
he  will  find  that  it  is  not  necessarily  a  philosophy  of 
despair,  but  one  of  profound  constructive  hope  for  a 
happy  life  in  the  here  and  now,  with  little  concern 
for  what  may  happen  when  the  pulses  are  stilled. 
He  will  find  that  it  is  a  philosophy  which  can  light 
this  present  world  with  new  meanings,  which  can 
thrill  the  human  spirit  with  a  new  and  flaming 
gaiety,  and  wdiich  can  motivate  man’s  whole  being 
with  a  deeper  sense  of  obligation  to  the  social  good. 

The  supremest  challenge  to-day  to  every  re¬ 
ligion  and  philosophy  of  supernaturalism  is  whether 
they  have  not  led  men  not  to  morality  but  to  im¬ 
morality,  especially  to  social  and  political  immor¬ 
ality.  It  is  a  grave  question,  in  my  mind,  whether, 
when  men  believe  there  is  another  world  where 
things  will  all  come  out  right,  if  it  does  not,  to  put  it 
plainly,  cause  them  to  lie  down  on  the  job  of  making 

266 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

them  come  out  right  in  this.  Supernaturalism 
teaches  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  It  has  never 
attempted  even  to  orient  men  at  all  in  any  sound  so¬ 
cial  or  political  ethics,  or  endeavored  to  teach  them 
what  sort  of  social  and  political  conduct  would  land 
them  in  Heaven,  or  what  sort  would  land  them  in 
Hell.  Supernatural  salvation  may  make  men  neg¬ 
lect  a  natural  salvation.  It  is  personal,  and  we  hear 
no  thunderings  from  Sinai  that  bad  sewage,  poor 
schools,  unventilated  factories,  chaotic  social  or¬ 
ganization,  political  inefficiency,  especially  inter¬ 
national  ethical  chaos,  would  land  men  in  perdition 
who  permit  themselves  to  live  under  such  social 
wickedness.  But  science  knows  no  forgiveness  of 
sins.  It  knows  only  the  law  of  cause  and  effect. 
Man’s  social  sins  at  least  can  not  be  held  in  escrow 
for  future  evaluation.  They  are  punished  here  and 
now.  Social  justice  is  its  own  heaven  and  social 
chaos  its  own  hell.  The  ethics  of  science  is  on  the 
all  or  none  principle.  Certainly,  no  philosophy  has 
offered  stronger  or  more  immediate  and  concrete 
ethical  sanctions  or  commands  for  men  to  be  good 
than  naturalism.  But  it  is  a  grave  question  whether 
supernaturalism  does  not  make  men  immoral.  It  is 
certainly  debatable  whether  it  does  not  make  them 
utterly  careless  of  the  social  good,  and  endure  ills 
they  would  not  if  they  did  not  have  in  their  mental 
pictures  of  the  universe,  another  world — a  wish- 
fancy  world  of  escape.  And  it  may  be  that  the 
mechanistic  philosophy,  which  teaches  that  we  are 
all  in  the  same  boat  drifting  across  seas  which  sci- 

267 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


ence  and  intelligence  alone  can  chart,  would  make 
men  feel  as  no  other  religion  can  make  them  feel, 
that  they  are  literally  their  brother’s  keeper,  wholly 
and  personally  responsible  for  developing  a  social 
and  political  order,  which  will  bring  life’s  richest 
values  to  all. 

Whether  we  espouse  a  purely  naturalistic 
conception  of  the  world,  or  one  more  filled  with  the 
warmth  of  the  spirit,  science  has  given  us  a  picture 
wholly  different  from  the  old  one.  And  it  is  one  in 
which  men  must  seek  new  consolations  and  in  which 
it  is  open  to  them  to  find  much  richer  values.  If 
any  sort  of  natural  picture  of  the  world  be  true,  then 
the  wider  personal  experience,  the  richer  ethical  ad¬ 
justments,  the  truer  estheticism,  in  short,  a  happy 
liveableness  of  life,  can  only  be  attained  through 
those  varied  and  opulent  experiences,  which  are 
possible  only  in  a  soundly  adjusted  social  order;  a 
truly  democratic  industry,  without  the  shams  of  po¬ 
litical  democracy;  a  political  aristo-democracy 
whose  objective  is  to  increase  the  dignity  and  worth 
of  men  as  human  beings,  each  of  whom  is  regarded 
as  a  distinct  and  unique  creator  and  determiner  of 
the  only  real  values  there  are — the  values  of  the 
human  spirit.  There  to  my  mind  is  the  challenge  of 
any  renaissance.  That  is  squarely  your  problem 
and  mine,  Your  Excellency,  and  of  all  men  who  wish 
to  think  straight,  hopefully  and  helpfully  in  this 
coming  time.  The  challenge  is  clear  and  simple. 
Can  the  materials  of  a  spiritual  and  intellectual 
renaissance,  which  have  come  up  out  of  the  labora- 

268 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


tories  of  science,  be  welded  and  synthesized  into  a 
joyous,  stimulating,  dynamic  philosophy  of  life 
which  enables  men  to  live  by  a  clear  light  of  reason, 
which  illuminates  and  guides  their  emotions,  instead 
of  groping,  as  the  masses  have  always  done,  in  the 
blind  darkness  of  dogmatic  faith. 

It  is  this  which  I  think  lay  in  the  mind  of  Dean 
Inge  of  London,  described  as  “The  gloomy  Dean,” 
although  he  may  turn  out  to  be  the  most  hopeful 
man  in  England,  when  he  said :  ‘ 4  The  spiritual  inte¬ 
gration  of  society  which  we  desire  and  behold  afar 
off,  must  be  illuminated  by  the  dry  light  of  science, 
and  warmed  by  the  rays  of  idealism,  a  white  light 
but  not  cold.  And  idealism  must  be  compacted  as  a 
religion,  for  it  is  the  function  of  religion  to  prevent 
the  fruits  of  the  flowering  times  of  the  spirit  from 
being  lost.”  This  is  or  can  be  made  a  great  flower¬ 
ing  time  of  the  human  spirit.  And  if  religion  can 
not  function  so  as  to  preserve  it,  then  its  way  is  lost. 
It  has  failed  mankind  in  his  supremest  hour  be¬ 
cause  of  its  failure  to  base  its  faith  upon  knowledge 
and  found  its  idealism  in  the  world  of  the  real — a 
real  which  science  has  at  last  taught  man  is  not  his 
enemy,  but  the  answering  echo  of  the  deepest  voices 
of  his  soul. 

Plainly  then,  to  educate  men  into  a  new  sort  of 
life  consonant  with  the  spirit  of  science,  touched 
with  its  excitements  and  lighted  with  its  new  ideal¬ 
isms  is  the  highest  individual  duty,  and  the  most 
X)ressing  social  and  political  problem  in  the  world 
to-day.  It  is  the  highest  privilege,  and,  by  all  means, 

269 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


the  highest  duty  which  has  come  both  to  the  philoso¬ 
pher  and  the  educator.  For,  if  philosophy  and  edu¬ 
cation  can  not  rush  to  the  rescue,  and  show  to  the 
untutored  man  a  truer,  wiser  and  larger  way  to  live 
in  this  new  world  of  science;  if  they  can  not  show 
him  how  to  be  a  truly  good  man  and  a  truly  happy 
man  in  a  natural  world,  then  civilization  is  indeed  in 
danger.  It  is  endangered  not  from  the  stupidity, 
ignorance  and  unreasoning  revolt  of  the  underman, 
as  the  biological,  psychological,  economic,  industrial 
and  administrative  fears,  of  which  we  have  heard, 
have  pictured,  but  from  his  clear  perception  that  the 
highest  intellectual  triumphs  of  man  have  failed  to 
give  him  any  sound  or  satisfying  reason  for  living 
at  all. 

Is  it  not  as  John  Dewey  asks  in  another  connec¬ 
tion,  “the  intellectual  task  of  the  twentieth  century 
to  take  this  last  step?”  Is  not  this  the  intellectual 
task  of  a  renaissance,  the  one  task  of  thoughtful 
men  in  the  world  to-day?  For  as  Dewey  continues, 
when  the  old,  fiat-created,  closed  world  of  dogmas 
and  metaphysics  has  given  place  to  the  new  con¬ 
ception  of  a  world  of  flux  and  change,  and  this  new 
conception  has  become  4  4  at  home  in  moral  and  social 
life”; 44 when  this  step  is  taken  the  circle  of  scientific 
development  will  be  rounded  out,  and  the  reconstruc¬ 
tion  of  philosophy  (and  I  might  add  the  reconstruc¬ 
tion  of  social  and  political  science)  he  made  an  aci 
complished  fact.” 


THE  ETHICAL  OUTLOOK 


THE  ETHICAL  OUTLOOK 

* 

The  Mental  Habits  fob  a  New  Approach 


I  have  thus,  Your  Excellency,  laid  before  you  the 
stern  warnings  and  high  commands  which  I  believe 
it  is  the  duty  and  privilege  of  the  scientist,  espec¬ 
ially  the  biologist,  in  this  day  and  age  to  utter.  Sci¬ 
entists  may  find  many  errors  in  detail,  but  I  believe 
all  will  agree  with  the  spirit.  “Human  speech,’ ’  in 
the  fine  phrase  of  Flaubert,  “is  like  a  cracked  tin 
kettle,  on  which  we  hammer  out  tunes  to  make  bears 
dance  when  we  long  to  move  the  stars.”  But  I  be¬ 
lieve,  with  all  the  multitudinous  tongues  with  which 
science  to-day  is  calling,  you  will  heed  its  voices. 
Your  goodness  of  heart  is  too  great,  your  common 
sense  too  sound,  for  you  not  to  see  that  they  speak  a 
larger  humanitarianism  and  a  truer  basis  of  social 
permanence  than  the  mere  instinctive  passions  and 
impulsive  trends  which,  heretofore,  have  furnished 
nearly  the  whole  dynamic  of  both  organic  and  social 
evolution.  They  call  for  no  change  in  human  nat¬ 
ure,  no  revolution  in  social  structure,  no  destruction 
of  the  great  administrative  agencies  of  government 
and  society  which  men,  through  toil  and  blood,  have 
already  established.  They  can  not  be  labeled  radi¬ 
cal  nor  conservative,  but  only  constructivist.  They 
involve  but  one  change  in  social  habits — the  use  of 
intelligence. 


273 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


The  world  is  too  big,  too  complex,  its  interests 
too  precious  for  it  longer  to  be  the  plaything  of 
either  bandits  or  dilettantes.  As  nations  have  ceased 
to  be  the  toys  of  kings,  so  social  destiny  must  cease 
to  be  a  mere  pawn  on  the  chess-board  of  ignorance. 
The  common  sense  that  sufficed  for  simpler  times 
is  no  longer  equal  to  the  affairs  of  a  planet.  Sci¬ 
ence  has  thrown  us  into  planetary  days,  and  we 
face  it  with  a  provincial  politics  and  a  town  meeting 
morals.  Men  must  train  for  larger  days ;  must  train 
their  intellects  and  expand  their  imaginations  to 
meet  this  “new  variety  of  untried  being. ”  In  fact 
what  men  need  is  not  some  solemn  brochure  such  as 
this,  but  some  ethical  Cervantes  who,  with  Gargan¬ 
tuan  mirth,  will  laugh  our  social  and  political  morals 
off  the  world’s  stage;  some  super-Don  Quixote  who 
will  personify,  in  his  windmill  tilting,  our  mystical, 
unreal,  impractical,  unhuman,  symbolical,  wish- 
fancy  ethics  as  being  as  comically  out  of  date  as 
Feudalism  sitting  on  a  keg  of  gunpowder.  It  is  no 
figure  of  speech  but  a  solemn  reality,  that  this  elec¬ 
trical,  gunpowder  age  may  explode  if  we  do  not 
quickly  develop  the  social  technique  to  grasp  and 
extinguish  the  thousand  lighted  fuses  that  are  rap¬ 
idly  burning  their  ways  toward  its  central  maga¬ 
zines. 

For  society  is  suffering  primarily  not  from  un¬ 
balanced  budgets  and  disrupted  ententes  but  from 
wrong  mental  processes.  Many  of  these  processes 
have  become  institutions ;  for  institutions,  as  Martin 
says,  are  simply  stereotyped  social  habits.  Con- 

274 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


sequently,  the  way  men  think  is  the  thing  that  makes 
right  or  wrong,  wise  or  foolish  institutions.  And 
there  are  ten  great  wrong  mental  processes — some 
of  them  age-old  institutions — which  prevent  the  in¬ 
ner  life  of  men  from  expanding  to  meet  the  new 
needs,  and  prevent  them  from  breathing  the  spa¬ 
cious  airs  of  a  new  spiritual  morning  with  which  sci¬ 
ence  is  ready  to  light  the  world.  These  mental  hab¬ 
its  are  not  called  evils  because  they  lie  so  far  behind 
our  obvious  evils  that  they  are  not  discerned.  They 
do  not  make  good  newspaper  head-lines.  Juries  and 
investigating  committees  never  list  them  as  the 

* 4 causes”  of  social  breakdown  because  the  juries 
# 

and  committees  are  themselves  caught  up  in  the 
same  network  of  habit.  But  until  they  are  observed 
and  corrected,  society  can  never  become  intelligent. 
And  until  society  becomes  intelligent  it  can  never  be 
hapjjy  or  free. 

First,  is  the  very,  very  few  people  in  the  world 
who  can  think.  Wrong  mental  habits  have  led  the 
race  to  breed  but  a  few  of  these  per  thousand  or  mil¬ 
lion  of  its  population.  Yet  human  destiny  is  in  the 
hands  of  these  few,  and  they  could,  by  right  mental 
habits  in  the  race,  be  multiplied  a  thousandfold. 

Second,  is  the  enormous  number  of  people  who 
can  not  think,  but  who  think  they  can  think,  and  who 
mistake  their  mystical  half -knowledge  for  social 
wisdom  and  act  upon  it. 

Third,  is  the  unwillingness  of  those  who  can  not 
think  to  trust  those  who  can. 

Fourth,  the  very  few  people  who  know  when  to 

275 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


refuse  intelligently  to  think,  and  to  employ  the 
man  who  knows — the  expert — to  think  for  them. 
Thorndike  believes  one  unfailing  test  of  an  edu¬ 
cated  man  is  that  “he  knows  when  not  to  think  and 
where  to  buy  the  thinking  he  needs.” 

Fifth,  the  vast  numbers  of  people  who  think  only 
in  crowd  terms — in  slogans  and  “solving  words,” 
who  believe  that  we  can  exorcise  the  evil  spirits  of 
society  by  pronouncing  unctuously  enough,  with 
proper  flag-waving  and  hundred  percentism,  some 
formula  of  social  regeneration. 

Sixth,  the  presence  among  us  of  an  unconscion¬ 
able  number  of  special  salesmen — professional 
propagandists  for  good  causes— -trained  up  to 
the  minute  in  selling  us  some  social,  spiritual,  eco¬ 
nomic  or  political  nostrum,  all  the  way  from  Secur¬ 
ity  Leagues,  Fundamentalism  and  Holy  Rollerism 
to  Democracy,  Christianity*,  Marxism  or  the  Greek 
spirit.  Not  a  single  one  of  these  but  denies  the  use 
of  free  intelligence  and  the  analytical  approach  in 
solving  social  dilemmas. 

Seventh,  the  fact  that  in  both  social  and  political 
organization  science — the  use  of  the  trained  analyti¬ 
cal  intelligence — is  not  represented  in  government 
but  is  controlled  by  government.  As  a  result,  social 
organization  is  trying  to  control  science  without  be¬ 
ing  scientific  itself.  Science  must  become  organic 


*Note  that  I  am  speaking  of  Christianity  and  not  of  the  religion 
of  Jesus — two  entirely  different  things,  as  Glenn  Frank  has 
brilliantly  argued.  If  the  religion  of  Jesus  laid  hold  of  men  it 
might  bring  the  millennium. 


276 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


in  social  control  instead  of  being  a  thing  outside  for 
social  control  to  amuse  itself  with. 

Eighth,  that  government  and  social  control  are 
in  the  hands  of  expert  politicians  who  have  power, 
instead  of  expert  technologists  who  have  wisdom. 
There  should  be  technologists  in  control  of  every 
field  of  human  need  and  desire — in  politics,  busi¬ 
ness,  industry,  education,  religion,  ethics,  philos¬ 
ophy,  charity,  law,  health,  labor,  employment ;  above 
all,  in  sociology,  which  is  simply  the  application  of 
all  the  sciences  to  human  life  and  destiny.  At  pres¬ 
ent,  educational,  social  and  political  government'  is 
almost  whollv  in  the  hands  of  business  men  who 
“know  their  business,”  but  who  do  not,  in  any  mod¬ 
ern  sense,  know  the  science  of  society,  and,  above  all, 
who  do  not  conceive  it  to  be  their  one  supreme  func¬ 
tion  as  social  agents  to  aid  men  in  creating  such  a 
science.  It  is  only  as  we  gain  a  true  science  of  soci¬ 
ety  that  business  itself  will  eliminate  its  ghastly 
wastes  and  attain  its  enormous  possible  profits. 

It  is  the  latter  two  mental  habits  which  prevent 
the  governments  of  the  world  from  promoting  a 
great  international  non-governmental  institute,  as 
suggested  by  Alleyne  Ireland,  for  the  objective  and 
comparative  study  and  analysis  of  their  own  forms 
and  function,  and  the  consequent  setting  up  between 
nations  of  mutual  rivalry  in  the  promotion  of  human 
welfare  instead  of  armaments — that  government  be¬ 
ing  the  “best”  which,  upon  purely  objective  analy¬ 
sis,  succeeds  most  fully  in  attaining  the  one  sole 
object  of  human  beings  having  government  at  all, 

277 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


namely,  the  welfare  and  racial  progress  of  its  people. 
As  it  is,  nobody  knows  what  the  effects  of  govern¬ 
ment  really  are,  nor  what  they  could  be. 

Ninth,  the  failure  of  education,  especially  pri¬ 
mary,  high  school  and  college  education — largely 
owing  to  the  dominance  of  the  previously  mentioned 
forces — to  teach  our  children  the  truth  that  sets 
them  free.  Oh,  for  a  Socrates,  a  Seneca,  a  Pasteur, 
a  Huxley,  a  Nietzsche,  a  Jesus,  in  every  nursery 
and  schoolroom !  They  were  no  different  from  com¬ 
mon  men  except  that  they  thought  straight  and  out 
loud.  We  can  never  have  them  everywhere,  for  there 
are  not  enough  such  people  alive  at  any  one  time; 
but  we  can  have  fathers,  mothers  and  teachers  who 
are  possessed  with  their  spirit — their  defiance  of 
authority,  their  surrender  to  reality  and  their  wil¬ 
lingness  to  face  it. 

Tenth,  the  lack  throughout  all  society  of  a  vast 
number  of  unambitious  men — a  thousand  times 
more  than  we  have  now — men  whose  lives  are  de¬ 
voted  not  to  profits  but  to  values,  not  money  but 
life — men  like  Buddha,  Socrates,  and  Seneca,  Vol¬ 
taire,  Nietzsche  and  Jesus;  like  Clerk-Maxwell, 
Darwin,  and  Henri  Poincare,  Mendel,  Galton  and 
Faraday:  like  Pearson,  Thorndike,  Shaffer,  Bate¬ 
son,  Morgan,  Pearl,  Woods,  Bidwell  Wilson,  Cat¬ 
ted,  Giddings,  Spaulding,  Fallen,  Martin,  Robin¬ 
son,  Dewey — these,  and  that  great  “ white  company’’ 
of  the  world’s  aristocrats,  whose  free  and  brave  in¬ 
tellects  have  followed  reality,  though  it  lead  them  to 
hell,  and  who,  as  a  consequence,  have  given  us  com- 

278 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


mon  men  nearly  all  that  is  worth  living  for,  fighting 
for  or  dying  for. 

To  fill  the  world  with  the  spirit  of  these  men  and 
the  two  methods,  the  humanistic  and  scientific,  by 
which  they  attained  truth,  is  the  hope  of  the  world, 
and  its  only  hope.  Eugenics  never  dreams  of  en¬ 
dowing  a  race  with  their  super-intelligence,  but  it 
can  endow  a  race  with  their  faith  in  intelligence  and 
their  high  scorn  of  “ wishful  thinking.”  Wishful 
thinking  has  brought  the  world  nearly  all  its  sor¬ 
row,  the  clarity  of  ordered  thinking  has  brought  it 
nearly  all  its  joy. 

To  make  the  things  of  which  I  have  spoken — this 
New  Decalogue  of  Science — the  living  drive  and  dy¬ 
namic  of  society  but  one  revolution,  then,  is  neces¬ 
sary — a  revolution  in  education ;  not  a  revolution  in 
the  mere  methods  of  teaching — that  is  already  in  the 
hands  of  experts.  But  there  must  be  a  revolution 
in  what  is  taught.  The  age  demands— our  youth  de¬ 
mand — an  education  freighted  with  a  new  set  of 
values  by  which  and  for  which  to  live.  Men  have 
lived  at  different  times  for  different  things.  A 
booted  cavalier  and  Daniel  in  the  lions’  den  lived 
for  totally  different  psychological  meanings.  And 
in  our  day  our  youth  must  be  taught  to  live  for 
those  new  things — those  sustaining  ardors,  copious 
communions  and  opulent  enchantments  of  the  spirit, 
for  which  the  scientist  and  philosopher  live.  They 
must  be  taught  to  feel  the  4 1 raptured  sweetness”  of 
their  nourishing  freedom,  with  all  its  critical  in¬ 
sights,  its  keen  edge  of  discovery  and  the  urging  call 

279 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


of  its  mysteries  that  forever  beckon  them  on.  For 
there  have  been  rare  and  crystal  days  of  the  world, 
such  as  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Renaissance,  the 
brief  hour  of  Grecian  bloom,  when  men  have  dared 
with  their  minds,  adventured  with  their  spirits,  and 
let  their  souls  frankly  listen  to  the  “ lyric  legions’ ’ 
of  those  seductive  voices,  with  which  Life,  in  those 
sunny  days,  sang,  intrigued  and  charmed. 

In  plain  blunt  truth  we  must  cease  lying  to  our 
youth — lying  to  them  as  we  do  from  the  cradle  up, 
about  truth  and  life — about  character,  morals, 
money,  ambition,  art,  Heaven,  religion,  amusement, 
happiness  and  God.  Both  honesty  and  intelligence 
must  be  used  or  they  will  soon  be  lost.  We  must  take 
our  children  into  the  genuine  secrets  of  life  and 
reality.  We  teach  them  to  experiment  fearlessly  in 
chemistry,  physics,  biology  and  even  in  psychology, 
upon  their  own  mental  operations,  but  we  begin  ly¬ 
ing  to  them  about  life  the  moment  they  leave  the 
laboratory.  It  truly  seems  to-day  as  if  the  whole 
world  were  in  a  secret  conspiracy  to  deceive  child¬ 
hood.  Here  they  are,  pouring  by  the  millions 
through  our  schools,  brave,  wide-eyed,  clean,  un¬ 
spoiled,  ready  to  do  and  dare  with  the  universe; 
their  pulses  tumbling  with  as  rich  idealisms  as  ever 
set  the  blood  of  a  happy  warrior  singing  upon  a 
great  enterprise.  We  instantly  close  these  open 
minds  and  teach  them  to  belong  to  parties,  to  evalu¬ 
ate  life  in  creeds,  to  express  social  power  in  catch¬ 
words,  to  compress  vast  ardors  into  conventional 
molds,  to  follow  whatever  spiritual  goose-step  suits 

280 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 

best  the  vested  religious,  economic  and  political  in¬ 
terests  of  the  time.  We  build  confessions  of  faith, 
and  defense  mechanisms  between  them  and  life.  In 
fact  they  learn  everything  except  something  direct, 
honest  and  real  about  life.  They  learn  everything 
about  the  universe  except  what  to  do  with  it.  We 
do  not  teach  them  to  think  life,  or  the  universe,  or 
any  social  problem  through.  Only  those  few  for¬ 
tunate  youths  who  come  under  the  teachings  of  the 
few  great  masters  in  our  universities,  who  are  not 
thrown  out  for  their  honesty,  or  those  rare  children 
who,  like  John  Stuart  Mill,  have  a  father  or  mother 
who  is  not  afraid  of  the  free  mind  of  a  child — only 
these  few  ever  find  out  what  life  is,  or  could  be,  or 
ought  to  be. 

If  you  doubt  this  go  into  any  community — ex¬ 
cept  some  great  city  where  sometimes  a  freed  mind 
can,  for  a  time  at  least,  escape  the  police — and  find, 
as  you  often  will,  some  shoemaker,  machinist,  law¬ 
yer,  doctor — never  a  preacher  for  he  would  be  dis¬ 
covered  and  thrown  out — who  thinks  about  life  or 
God  or  political  parties  with  the  same  free  intelli¬ 
gence  with  which  he  thinks  about  his  business  or 
craft,  and  you  find  him  feared  and  ostracized.  He 
is  used  in  Sunday-school  as  a  horrible  example  to 
frighten  children  into  the  truth.  It  is  bruited 
in  terrified  whispers  that  he  is  a  free-thinker — 
the  one  thing  under  heaven  among  men  that  we  need 
to-day  the  most — or  that  he  even  reads  Tom 
Paine,  or  doubts  the  miracles.  Children  are  taught 
to  wonder  why  the  curse  of  God  does  not  descend 

281 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


upon  him — the  only  explanation  being  that  God 
must  be  saving  him  for  some  purpose.  The  town 
drunkard  is  looked  upon  as  a  fit  subject  for  prayer 
and  forgiveness,  but  this  man  lies  beyond  the  divine 
pale.  There  is  no  hope  for  him  because  he  defies 
God. 

He  may  be  and  often  is  the  sweetest,  gentlest 
soul  in  the  community,  fine-mannered,  neighborly, 
tolerant  and  just.  But  his  very  tolerance  is  his  un¬ 
doing.  He  does  not  hate  as  he  should.  He  really 
doesn’t  know  whether  he  is  a  Baptist,  Presbyterian, 
or  Catholic,  Jew  or  Gentile,  Democrat  or  Republi¬ 
can.  He  thinks  about  social  problems  and  life  in¬ 
stead  of  about  these  things.  This  keeps  him  from 
hating.  Instead  of  hating  he  lives.  Crowds  always 
hate.  They  are  organized  for  the  purpose  of  hat¬ 
ing  wholesale  instead  of  retail.  Each  hater  thus 
gains  the  moral  support  of  his  fellow  haters. 
The  Kaiser  had  his  crowd  of  moral  supporters; 
the  Allies  had  theirs.  The  war  was  a  clash  of  two 
brands  of  moral  hate  supporters.  Crowds  clothe 
hate  with  holy  unction  and  invest  it  with  ritual. 
They  elevate  it  into  a  religion  and  suffuse  it  with 
art.  If  they  did  not  they  would  instantly  dissolve, 
and  tolerance,  straightway,  would  perfume  the  air. 
For  this  reason  tolerance  is  poison  gas  to  crowds. 
They  constantly  wear  their  gas-masks  to  forefend 
its  deadly  fumes.  Consequently  the  freed  man  fares 
nearly  as  badly  in  this  age  of  light  and  liberty  as 
he  did  in  the  Dark  Ages.  He  is  merely  kept  out  of 
a  job  instead  of  being  burned.  That  is  some  gain. 

282 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


People  to-day  put  in  sewers  and  trolley  cars  by  free- 
thinking.  That  is  also  some  gain.  But  the  refusal 
to  face  life,  God,  political  ethics  and  industrial 
morals  with  the  same  unfettered  intelligence  is 
the  one  sleepless  enemy  against  the  entrance  of  the 
world  into  a  great  age  of  idealistic-realism,  where 
men  could  find  the  endless  values  of  liberty,  and 
where  the  humblest  man  could  literally  walk  and 
talk  with  God. 

How,  then,  can  we  expect  intelligent  social  ac¬ 
tion  when  people  will  not  use  intelligence  or  trust  it 
when  it  offers  its  ministry!  The  ten  mental  pro¬ 
cesses,  however,  which  I  have  named,  are  all  that 
stand  in  the  way.  And  they  can  be  changed  by  edu¬ 
cation.  Education  does  change  people.  It  causes 
them  to  live  for  different  things.  The  white  light 
of  idealism  must  be  made  to  shine  upon  the  face  of 
reality.  And  when  it  does,  reality  will  be  found  to  be 
not  a  grim,  forbidding  monster  with  which  to 
frighten  children  and  keep  them  frightened  till  they 
die.  Reality  will  be  found  to  be  what  the  scientist 
knows  it  is,  a  “high-born  kinsman”  of  our  own.  In 
its  highest  reaches,  it  meets  the  ideal.  The  two  are 
found  to  be  different  aspects  of  experience.  Their 
reconciliation,  their  evaluation,  their  proportionate 
emphasis,  as  Dewey  says,  “is  the  standing  problem 
of  life.  ’  ’  It  is  this  conflict  between  the  real  and  the 
ideal  which  gives  life  its  edge,  its  worthwhileness, 
its  perspective.  But  when  children  and  youth  are 
taught  to  shun  the  real,  to  fear  it,  to  live  in  a  realm 
of  wish-fancies,  defense  mechanisms,  unrealities, 

283 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OP  SCIENCE 


superstitions  and  symbolisms ;  when  they  are  hypno¬ 
tized  by  education  into  an  intellectual  catalepsy,  we 
can  never  set  life  before  them  in  any  ordered  fashion, 
nor  approach  social  problems  with  any  just  per¬ 
spective.  Idealism  loses  all  its  force  and  meaning 
when  expended  upon  unrealities.  I  repeat,  Your 
Excellency,  that  it  is  not,  primarily,  the  obvious  ills 
from  which  the  world  is  suffering  which  constitute 
the  tragedy  of  this  age,  but  the  wrong  mental  habits 
with  which  people  meet  life  and  try  to  solve  its  end¬ 
less  dilemmas.  Science,  experiment,  analysis,  free- 
thinking,  the  play  of  unfettered  intelligence  in  the 
place  of  dogmas,  creeds,  solving  words,  and  social 
and  political  rituals,  all  of  which  are  merely  petri¬ 
fied  thinking,  these  and  these  alone  offer  the  only 
hope  of  a  sunnier  and  sweeter  day  for  men  and 
women  and  little  children  to  live  in. 

In  closing  these  comments  upon  statesmanship 
and  life  may  I  express  the  earnest  hope  that  they 
have  brought  you  at  times  deep  and  lasting  pain — 
pain  such  as  that  keen  social  diagnostician,  Bag- 
hot,  spoke  of  when  he  said,  “the  keenest  pain  known 
to  human  nature  is  the  pain  of  a  new  idea.” 
The  writer  has  failed  if  he  has  not  communicated  to 
you  the  same  deep  mental  anguish  with  which  he, 
himself,  has  attained  to  something  at  least  of  this 
critical  attitude  toward  life,  and  the  spiritual  release 
of  having  accepted  the  universe  as  it  appears  to  the 
open,  and,  I  trust,  constantly  opening  mind. 

You  and  I  were  taught  in  boyhood  that  this 
world  is  a  vale  of  tears,  that  God  was  to  be  feared, 

284 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


that  human  nature  was  depraved,  and  that  our  only 
hope  lay  in  some  specious  “faith”  in  a  particular 
“scheme  of  salvation.”  How  enchantingly  far 
away  that  all  seems  to  a  man  who  has  attained  the 
only  salvation  there  is  or  can  be — the  salvation  of 
intellectual  freedom.  And  I  believe  that  the  same 
scheme  of  intellectual  redemption  is  spreading 
throughout  the  world.  Here  and  there  a  new  lamp  is 
being  lighted — a  tiny  light  it  may  be,  but  it  helps  to 
illuminate  the  way  to  social  salvation.  Some  tolerant 
man  somewhere,  who,  when  the  hour  for  real  fight¬ 
ing  and  real  hating  comes,  is  found  to  be  an  unloosed 
Fury,  thinks  of  a  better  way  of  doing  social  things, 
and  is  able  to  persuade  a  few  neighbors  to  fall  in, 
and  straightway  the  world  has  moved  a  little  for¬ 
ward. 

For  instance,  over  in  Cincinnati  some  one  thought 
of  something  called  a  “Social  Unit,”  not  a  revolu¬ 
tion  nor  a  cooperative  commonwealth  nor  a  Utopia 
- — just  a  little  more  efficient  way  of  acting  toward 
one’s  neighbors — described  as  “something  friendly 
that  helps,”  “a  new  social  practise  and  attitude,” 
‘  ‘  an  extension  of  democracy  beyond  the  ballot  box,  ’ 9 
an  attitude  that  “you  are  as  good  as  I  am  instead 
of  the  usual  attitude  that  I  am  as  good  as  you  are.” 
This  is  an  important  social  discovery.  If  it  extends, 
it  will  wreck  every  crowd  in  the  world.  Down  at 
Stanton,  Virginia,  a  young  man  named  Richard 
Child  thought  of  a  new  way  of  governing  cities.  It 
was  later  extended  to  Dayton,  Ohio.  He  is  now 
extending  it  to  governing  counties.  He  may  ex- 

285 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


tend  it  to  governing  nations.  No  telling  what 
will  happen  when  a  young  man  gets  to  thinking. 
But  the  world  is  another  step  forward.  In  Chicago, 
Chief  Justice  Olson  got  down  off  his  bench  and 
went  into  a  laboratory  and  studied  biology  and 
psychology  in  order  to  understand  the  criminals  he 
was  hanging.  He  began  with  Drosophila  flies  and 
guinea  pigs,  for  “the  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
Drosophila”  and  guinea  pigs.  As  a  result  the 
world’s  airs  are  a  bit  finer,  more  fragrant,  more 
invigorating.  By  just  that  much  this  world  ceases 
to  be  a  vale  of  tears,  and  becomes  a  “haven  of  joy” 
which  we  were  taught  was  only  in  some  other  world. 

And  so  it  goes,  and  always  has,  and  always  will. 
Some  unambitious  man  has  broken  away  from  the 
crowd  and  given  men  all  there  is  to  be  ambitious 
for.  Their  numbers  are  increasing.  And  they  are 
speaking  more  and  more  through  the  voice  of  sci¬ 
ence.  I  believe  you  will  heed  them.  Your  endless 
charities,  your  boundless  altruisms,  your  ambitious 
schemes  to  educate  everybody,  your  insatiate  cry 
for  more  democracy,  gives  me  an  abiding  faith  that 
you  will  in  the  end  accept  a  charity  that  saves  life, 
an  education  that  frees  life,  a  democracy  that  ar¬ 
ticulates,  galvanizes  and  promotes  life.  But  back 
of  it  all,  at  the  bottom  of  it  all,  as  the  biologist  views 
it,  lies  the  integrity  of  the  racial  blood.  No  ethics, 
religion,  art, .  democracy,  idealism,  philosophy,  or 
any  other  dream  of  man  can  long  succeed  unless 
blood  currents  of  the  race  be  kept  rich,  regnant  and 
alive.  And  here  again  this  all  depends  upon  men’s 

286 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


mental  habits  and  the  ethics,  religion  and  philosophy 
which  come  out  of  them.  The  scheme  of  redemption 
the  world  most  needs  is  the  break-up  of  its  mental 
habits,  and  the  turning  of  its  mental  and  spiritual 
processes  into  those  free  open  channels  which  experi¬ 
mental  science,  critical  analysis  of  natural  forces, 
and  a  free  philosophy  of  a  natural  universe  has 
taught  the  scientist  how  to  teach  to  men. 

But  in  our  tolerance  of  intolerance  and  intoler¬ 
ance  of  tolerance  the  statesman,  the  common  man — 
all  of  us  have  been  caught  up  in  a  vast  network  of 
habits  that  are  hard  to  break.  But  they  are  slowly 
breaking.  When  they  do  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
will  be  found  to  have  come  without  observation. 
And  the  world-ethics  that  comes  with  a  freed  spirit 
will  extend  that  kingdom  on  earth  as  in  Heaven. 
But  in  our  narrow  nationalism  and  our  ephemeral 
schemes  of  merely  environmental  reform,  we  have 
forgotten  two  individuals — our  geographic  neigh¬ 
bor  on  the  other  side  of  the  world  and  our  biological 
brother  of  the  unborn  to-morrow.  And  all  history 
is  witness  that  if  we  forget  either  one,  our  civiliza¬ 
tion,  like  all  others,  will  run  a  brief  course  of  mete¬ 
oric  splendor  and  pass  away  into  the  trackless  void. 
So  far  we  have  thought  only  to  leave  the  men  of  our 
own  time  and  our  own  tribe  a  material  and  cultural 
legacy,  instead  of  also  bequeathing  to  all  men  of  all 
time  the  biologic  legacy  of  strong  bodies  and  great 
souls. 

For,  finally,  Your  Excellency,  if  our  social  or¬ 
ders  are  to  endure,  and  be  sufficient  unto  the  salva- 

287 


THE  NEW  DECALOGUE  OF  SCIENCE 


lion  not  of  a  few  but  of  all  men — the  salvation  of 
men  to  the  sustaining  splendor,  the  “divine  com¬ 
pleteness”  of  an  open  world  of  intellectual  and 
spiritual  liberty — then  the  ethics  of  the  microscope 
and  the  chemist’s  test  tube,  the  religion  of  the  math¬ 
ematician’s  honesty  and  rigidity  of  logical  process; 
the  philosophy  of  “intelligently  thought-out  possi¬ 
bilities  of  this  existent  world  which  may  be  used  as 
methods  for  making  over  and  improving  it”;  in 
short,  the  completed  Judaism,  Buddhism,  Confu¬ 
cianism,  Islamism,  Christianity  of  science,  must  be¬ 
come  the  dominating,  informing  spirit  of  society 
and  the  State.  |  Our  morality,  religion  and  education ; 
our  industrial,  economic,  social  and  political  ethics, 
and  the  statesmanship  that  derives  from  them  must, 
like  the  mercy  of  God,  take  on  the  wideness,  open¬ 
ness  and  power  of  the  sea,  the  variability,  adapta¬ 
bility  and  eternity  of  protoplasm,  and  the  honesty, 
gaiety  and  tolerance  of  the  sunshine/ 


THE  END 


INDEX 


s 


INDEX 


A 

Adaptation, 

force  of  evolution,  135 
Advanced  races  are  going  back¬ 
ward,  25-41 

American  Intelligence,  Study  of, 
Brigham,  Carl,  35 
Anderson,  Sherwood, 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 

Animals, 

bred  for  specific  excellence, 
137,  138 

idiots  among,  102 
Army, 

mental  status, 

shown  by  tests,  28,  29 
physical  status,  26-27 

Art, 

biological  significance,  205, 
212 

duty  of,  205-216 
evolution, 

relation  of,  205,  213- 
214,  216 

factor  in  mate-selection,  213 
portrait  painters, 

types  of  subjects,  207- 
209 

progress  in,  240 
scientific  foundation  essen¬ 
tial,  108-109 
Artists, 

scientific  knowledge  essen¬ 
tial,  214-215 

B 

Babies, 

born  to  employed  mothers, 
85-87 


Babies,  continued 

child  welfare  work, 
effects,  66—67 
eugenics, 

better  children  obtained 
through,  100-101 
importance  in  social  organ¬ 
ization,  37 
unfit  parentage,  62 
Balfour,  Earl, 

philosophy  of,  255 
quoted  on  human  race,  177— 
178 

Bible, 

eugenics, 

recognized  in  New  Tes¬ 
tament,  99 

mental  inequality  recog¬ 
nized,  44-45 
science  and,  111 
Biology 

(see  also  Science) 

aid  to  civilization,  181-182 

defined,  15 

effect  on  art,  205 

knowledge  of, 

essential  in  race  prog¬ 
ress,  107 

race  statistics  furnished  by, 
178 

Birth  control, 

use  and  abuse,  176-177 
Birth  rate 

(see  also  Reproduction) 
decrease  of  leaders,  38 
differential,  34-35 
families  of  Puritans,  171 
percentage  essential  to  race, 
176 

Puritan  stock, 

decline  in,  180 


291 


INDEX 


Birth  rate,  continued 
race  effected  by,  37 
school-teachers  vs.  boot¬ 
blacks,  172 
statistics,  35 
superiors, 

decrease  in,  174-175 
vocations, 

percentage  comparison, 
172—173 

Birth  statistics,  172-173,  176 
Puritans’  descendants,  180 
Bolshevism, 

psychology  of,  161-162 
Brigham,  Carl  (Professor), 

Study  of  American  Intel¬ 
ligence ,  35 

Bryan,  William  Jennings, 

Dr.  T.  V.  Smith  quoted  on, 
129-131 
eugenics, 

attitude  toward,  105 
Burroughs,  John, 
quoted,  265 

Butler,  Nicholas  Murray, 
on  Greek  ideals,  193 

C 

California, 

vivisection  in,  131 
Carnegie  Institution, 
eugenics, 

defined,  101 

Cato, 

quoted,  19-20 
Cattell,  J.  McKeen  (Dr.), 

of  Psychology  Corporation, 
145 

Century  Magazine , 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
Charity, 

dangers  of,  54-60 
Chesterton,  G.  K., 
eugenics, 

attitude  toward,  105- 
106 

on  man’s  philosophy,  245 
Child,  Richard, 
government, 

new  process  of,  285-286 


Childhood, 

revision  in  training,  280-281 
Churches, 

restriction  of  ideas,  239 

Citizenship, 

qualities  for,  148 

Civilization, 

ethics  created  by,  102 
food  supply, 

effect  on,  219-221 
intelligence  as  guide  to  new 
era,  273 
men, 

measuring  of  qualities, 
135 

modern  philosophy, 

effect  of,  258-264 
new  philosophy, 

effect  of,  261-264 
popularization  of  science  es¬ 
sential  to,  121-134 
races  destroyed  by,  25 
reproduction, 

selection  disregarded, 
173-174 

science  as  teacher,  19-22 
“ World  State,” 

effect  on,  225—229 
College  students, 

intelligence  tests,  191 

Conklin,  Edwin  Grant  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

quoted,  138 
Conrad,  Joseph, 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 

Conscience, 

defined,  83 

effect  of  dictation  by,  85 
Puritanical  view,  84 
science  as  aid  to,  19 

Corbin,  John, 

Return  of  the  Middle  Class , 
37 

Crowds,  282 

Crum,  Frederick  S., 

quoted  on  birth  statistics, 
180 


292 


INDEX 


D 

Darwin,  Charles, 
eugenics, 

discoveries  in,  99 
evolution  theory,  72 
Davenport,  Charles  B.  (Doctor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
David,  King, 
quoted,  186 
Dayton,  Ohio, 
flood,  228 

form  of  government,  285, 
286 

Decalogue, 

comprehension  of  word,  191 
Degenerates, 

danger  of  reproduction 
among,  57 

medical  aid  provided, 
effects  of,  61—68 
Democracy, 

as  understood  by  the  un¬ 
intelligent,  32 
leaders  of, 

confidence  in,  199-202 
selection,  188-189 
position  in  race  develop¬ 
ment,  212-213 

Democracy  and  the  Human 
Equation, 

Ireland,  Alleyne,  37-38 
Destiny  of  man 

(see  Human  destiny) 

Dewey,  John  (Professor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  kinds  of  philosophy,  247 
on  modern  philosophy,  270 
on  social  progress,  21-22 
Diseases, 

civilization, 

effect  upon,  25 
statistics,  26-28 
Dogmatism,  244 
Draft  records, 
army, 

physical  status  shown 
by,  26 

Dramatists, 

scientific  knowledge  essen¬ 
tial,  214-215 


Dreiser,  Theodore, 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 
Driesch,  Hans, 

philosophy  of,  257 
Drosophila,  222,  286 

E 

East,  E.  M.  (Professor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  food  supply,  221-223 
Edman,  Irwin  (Doctor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
philosophy  of,  255-256 
Education, 

defined,  194 

effect  on  coming  generations, 
indirect,  69-76 
failure  of,  278 
freedom  of  thought  lacking 
in,  278 

modern  trend  of,  193-194 
radical  change  essential, 
279-281 
unbiased,  204 
Ellis,  Havelock, 

on  population  increase,  221- 
222 

Employment, 

expectant  mothers,  86-87 
Energy, 

eugenics  ’  ideal,  137 
measurable  quality,  140 
vocational  selection, 

means  of  obtaining,  145 
<l  Ethical  process,” 

development  necessary,  116-4 
117 

Ethics, 

new, 

science  means  of,  95- 
96 

progress  lacking  in,  21 
science,  basis  of  new  under¬ 
standing,  274 
Eugenics, 

agencies  effecting,  101 
defined, 

negatively,  99-100 


293 


INDEX 


Eugenics,  continued 

definition  and  scope,  99-111 
ideal  standard  for,  136-137 
solution  of  problem,  184 
Evolution, 

&ri/ 

relation  of,  205,  213- 
214,  216 

causes  unknown,  116 
danger  of  reproduction 
among  inferiors,  54-57 
effected  by  industrial  selec¬ 
tion,  144 

four  forces  of,  135 
importance  of, 

in  man ’s  mental  de¬ 
velopment,  90-91 
man  as  director  of,  139 
man’s  ignorance  of,  33-34 
process  shown  by  facial 
changes,  207-210 
race  progress,  69-76 
righteousness, 

true  aim  of,  115-116 
trend  through  selection  of 
similar  types,  211-212 
Evolutionist, 
defined,  71 


F 

Family  life, 

city  dwelling, 

detriment  to,  183 
factor  in  industrial  equilib¬ 
rium,  165—166 

reestablishment  of,  182,  184 
Fisk,  Eugene  Lyman  (Doctor), 
quoted  on  health  statistics, 
26,  27-28 
Fiske,  John, 
quoted,  184 

Fisher,  Daniel  W.  (Doctor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
Flaubert, 

quoted,  273 
Food  supply, 

effect  on  mankind,  219-221 
Frank,  Glenn  (Doctor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 


Frank,  Glenn,  continued 

on  nationalism,  224-225 
statesman  and  author,  132, 
133 

Free-thinkers,  281-284 
Fruit  fly,  222,  286 


G 

Galton  Eugenics  Laboratory,  86 
Galton,  Francis  (Sir), 
eugenics, 

discoveries  in,  99 
founder  of,  101 

Genius, 

men  of, 

percentage,  140 

Giddings,  Franklin  H.  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
Studies  in  the  Theory  of 
Society ,  217 

God, 

revealed  through  science,  17— 
18 

Gods, 

typical  characteristics,  159 
Golden  Rule  of  science,  110-111 
Golden  Rule  without  science  will 
wreck  race  that  tries  it,  54^-60 
Good  Samaritan,  18 
Gore,  J.  K., 

quoted  on  disease  increase, 
27 

Government, 

confidence  in  officials,  199- 
202 

county  and  state,  202 
if  handled  by  scientists,  197— 
198 

science  applied  to,  125-128 
technologists  should  control, 
276-278 

type  of  politicians,  188-189 
Great  Britain, 

as  socialistic  commonwealth, 
192-193 

health  statistics,  27 


294 


INDEX 


H 

Haldane,  J.  B.  S.  (Viscount), 
on  human  beings  produced 
artificially,  146 
philosophy  of,  255 
Hall,  Stanley, 

quoted  on  civilization,  33 
Hall  of  Fame,  47 
Hamsun,  Knut, 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 

Hardy, 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 

Health, 

eugenics’  ideal,  137 
measurable  quality,  140 
vocational  selection, 

means  of  obtaining,  145 
Health  Building  and  Life  Ex¬ 
tension , 

Fisk,  Eugene  L.,  26 
Health  statistics,  26-27 
Hebrews, 

early  teachings,  68 
eugenics, 

knowledge  of,  99 
Heredity, 

attempts  to  disprove,  51-52 
chief  maker  of  men,  42-53 
force  of  evolution,  135 
germination  theory,  73 
importance  of,  42-43,  52 
purity  of  racial  blood 
needed,  286,  287 
qualities  of  present  genera¬ 
tion  inherited,  55-56,  58- 
59 

three  traits  of,  137 
variations  in  characteristics, 
69-70 

Hergesheimer,  Joseph, 
biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 
Hoffman,  Frederick  I., 

quoted  on  disease  statistics, 
27-28 
Home  life 

(see  Family  life) 


Human  destiny, 

intelligence  as  guide,  273- 
288 

science, 

aid  to,  19-22 

statesmanship  as  controlling 
factor,  15-16 
Human  race 

(see  Mankind) 

Human  speech, 

Flaubert’s  definition,  273 
Huxley, 

on  experimental  science,  82 
on  importance  of  birth  rate, 
34-35 

I 

Immigration, 

American  development, 
effect  on,  228,  229 
race  deterioration  caused  by, 
35,  57 
Indiana, 

crime  in,  60 
Indians,  American, 

effect  of  civilization  on,  224 
tuberculosis  among,  66 
Industrial  Workers  of  the  World, 
psychology  of,  161-162 
Industry, 

health  statistics,  27 
humanizing, 

duty  of,  153-170 
leaders  of, 

knowledge  of  human  na¬ 
ture  needed,  155-157 
men  in, 

vocational  measurement, 
141-144 

new  psychology  of,  158-161 
psychological  problems,  164— 
168 

talents  inborn,  141-142 
Infants 

(see  Babies) 

Inge,  Dean, 

quoted,  269 
Intelligence, 

decline  of  its  transmission, 
202 


295 


INDEX 


Intelligence,  continued 
defined,  30 

duty  of  trusting,  186-204 
freedom  of,  285 
guide  to  morality,  21 
heredity  as  chief  factor,  42- 
53 

keynote  to  new  social  organ¬ 
ization,  273-288 
lack  of  respect  for,  187-188 
mankind, 

lacks  development,  25 
peace  obtained  through, 
218-219 

present  status,  32-33 
students7  tests,  191 
superiority  of,  186-187 
tests,  28-32 
three  kinds  of,  144 
Internationalism, 

civilization’s  use  of,  223- 
224 

duty  of,  217-232 
importance  to  posterity,  287 
kind  of  development  needed, 
229-232 

Ireland,  Alleyne, 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
Democracy  and  the  Human 
Equation,  37-38,  199 

J 

James,  William  (Professor), 
ideal  type,  136 
quoted, 

on  life,  251 

on  ‘  ‘  solving  words,  7 7 
190 

K 

Knibbs, 

on  population  increase,  222 
Knowledge, 

defined,  247-248 

L. 

Lankester,  E.  Eay  (Sir), 
quoted  on  evolution,  33 
Laughlin,  Harry  H.  (Hr.), 
on  immigration,  56-57 


Lawrence,  D.  H., 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence,  107 
Leaders  of  mankind 
(see  Mankind) 

Life, 

purpose  of,  20 
teaching  children,  280,  281 
understanding  of,  251 
Lowell,  James  Russell, 
quoted,  251-252 

Lusk  Committee  of  New  York, 
192 

M 

MacDougall,  William  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
Is  America  Safe  for  Democ¬ 
racy,  17  4 
Mankind, 
art, 

influence  of,  205-207 
charity, 

dangers  of,  54-60 
diseases, 

effect  of  civilization  on, 
25 

early  ideas  of  life,  89-90 
eugenics, 

essential  to  progress, 
101-111 

family  life  essential,  165- 
166 

food  shortage, 

effect  on,  219-221 
forces  that  motivate,  166 
germination  and  develop¬ 
ment,  69-76 

Golden  Rule  of  science,  110- 
111 

heredity, 

importance  of,  42-53 
inequality  of,  36,  39-41,  147 
leaders, 

decrease  of,  25 
laboring  class  origin,  38 
mating, 

art  as  factor  in  selec¬ 
tion,  213 


296 


INDEX 


Mankind,  continued 

assortative,  141-142 
improvement  by  selec¬ 
tion,  74-75 

similar  types,  145,  149- 
150 

measuring  qualities  of,  135- 
152 

modern  philosophy, 
effect  of,  258-264 
modern  standards,  195-196 
morality, 

science  as  aid  to,  112- 
134 

need  of  philosophy,  245-246 
new  philosophy, 

possible  effect,  262-264 
trained  to  understand, 
261-262 

physically  unfit, 

aid  given  to,  181-182 
effects  of  medical  aid, 
61-68 

present  estimate  of  charac¬ 
teristics,  158-159,  160, 

164 

produced,  artificially,  146 
religious  development  of,  90- 
92 

religious  understanding 
through  science,  79-96 
righteousness  rewarded,  ISO- 
187 

theories  regarding  human 
nature,  157-158 
type  as  standard,  198-199 
type  changes  shown  by  por¬ 
traits,  207-209 
valuations  of  life  changed 
through  science,  233,  243 
Martin,  Everett  Dean, 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  nationality,  224 
on  progress  of  mankind,  240 
philosophy  taught  by,  256, 
265 

quoted  on  education,  194 
Mating, 

-art  as  factor  in  selection, 
213 


Mating,  continued 

assortative,  141-142,  144 
improvement  by  selection,. 
74-75 

similar  types,  145,  149-150 
Measuring  men, 

duty  of,  135-152 
social  and  political  qualities, 
144-152 

vocational  qualities,  141-144 
Medical  aid, 

for  physically  unfit, 

effects  on  race,  61-68 
evidence  of  civilization, 
181 

Medicine,  hygiene  and  sanitation 
will  weaken  the  human  race, 
61-68 

Mencken,  H.  L., 

biological  education, 

ability  to  influence, 
107-108 

Mendel,  Gregor, 
eugenics, 

discoveries  in,  99 
heredity  theory,  73 
Mentality, 

erroneous  processes  of,  275- 
279,  283 

inequality  of,  42-53 
intellectual  freedom,  285 
kinds  of  mental  intelligence, 
28-29 

mental  habits  for  a  new  ap¬ 
proach,  273-288 
tests  of,  28-32 
Metallurgy, 

beginning  of,  114,  119 
Mill,  John  Stewart,  281 
Minnesota, 

politician  from,  188-189 
Mitchell,  Wesley  C., 

quoted  on  political  economy, 
160 
Morality, 

intelligence  as  guide  to,  21 
progress  limited,  240-241 
science, 

aid  to  understanding, 
112-120 


297 


INDEX 


Morality,  continued 

standards  changed  by  race 
progress,  19 

Morals,  education,  art  and  re¬ 
ligion  will  not  improve  the 
human  race,  69-76 
Morgan,  Thomas  Hunt  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
Mortality  statistics,  27 
Moses, 

evolutionist,  71 
Mothers, 

expectant, 

effects  of  working,  85- 
87 

Motion  pictures,  203 
N 

Nationality, 

“  World  State,”  225-229 
Nationality  and  nationalism, 
224-225 
Naturalism, 

in  philosophy,  254-270 
New  Decalogue  of  Science,  18, 
22 

teachings  changed  by,  279 
New  philosophy 

(see  Philosophy) 

New  York  City, 

Mayor  of,  189 
Nietzsche,  255 

O 

Olson,  Harry  (Judge), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
scientific  studies,  286 

P 

Painters, 

types  portrayed  by,  207-209 
Parker,  Carleton  H., 
quoted,  155 

Patrick,  G.  T.  W.  (Professor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
Psychology  of  Social  Recon¬ 
struction ,  155 
quoted,  159,  161-162 


Patterson,  Donald  G.  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

intelligence  tests  for  stu¬ 
dents,  191 

Peace, 

obtained  through  intelli¬ 
gence,  218-219 
Pearl,  Raymond  (Doctor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  medical  aid  to  degener¬ 
ates,  64-65 

quoted  on  population,  175, 
221-223 

Pearson,  Karl  (Professor), 
proofs  of  evolution,  209 
quoted  on, 

medical  aid  to  degener¬ 
ates,  62—63 

statistical  research  of,  86, 
87 

studies  in  infant  death  rate, 
67 

Pease,  Morton  (Professor), 
quoted  on  eugenics,  136 
Philanthropy, 

dangers  of,  54-60 
Philosopher, 

as  politician,  238 
Philosophical  reconstruction, 
duty  of,  233-270 
Philosophy, 

definition  and  scope,  234— 
235,  237 

free  thought  about, 

necessary  to  civilization, 
244-245 

key  to  the  understanding  of 
life,  245-246 

mechanistic  view,  254-255 
modern, 

effect  of,  258-264 
new  valuation  of  life, 
233,  237-238 
naturalism,  254-270 
new, 

ideas  of  life  changed 
by,  268-270 

possible  effect  on  man, 
262-264 


298 


INDEX 


Philosophy,  continued 
new, 

sense  of  responsibility 
created,  265-268 
of  coming  generation,  235- 
236 

practical  basis  of,  248-249 
progress  in,  240 
teaching  of  impostors,  241- 
243 

three  kinds  of,  247-249 
Physical  culture, 

no  effect  on  next  generation, 
100 

Pictorial  Beview, 

acknowledgment  to,  10 
Plato, 

eugenics, 

knowledge  of,  99 
Ploetz  (Professor), 

on  infant  death  rate,  67 
Poets, 

scientific  knowledge  essen¬ 
tial,  214-215 
Political  economy, 
defined,  160 

theories  impractical,  153 
Political  measurement,  144-152 
Politicians, 

technical  training  essential, 
188 

untrained  for  office,  121-124 
Politics, 

present  methods  of  states¬ 
manship,  121-124 
progress  limited,  240-241 
Popenoe  and  Johnson’s, 

Applied  Eugenics,  180 
Population, 

increase  in,  221-223 
United  States  of  the  future, 
175-176 

Prenatal  culture, 

no  effect  on  next  generation, 
100 

Principles  of  Sociology, 

Boss,  E.  A.,  158 
Psychology, 

knowledge  of, 
limited,  116 


Psychology,  continued 

new  working  basis  of,  158- 
161,  165-170 
theory  of, 

changed,  248 

Psychology  Corporation,  145 
Psychology  of  Social  Beconstruc- 
tion, 

Patrick,  G.  J.  W.,  155 
Puritans, 

descendants  of,  179,  180 
heredity  influence,  51 
families  of,  171 
moral  perceptions,  84 


Q 

Quick,  Herbert, 

on  county  and  state  govern¬ 
ment,  202 


B 

Paces, 

advanced, 

civilization  as  destruc¬ 
tive  force,  25 

facial  changes  in,  207-210 
germination  and  develop¬ 
ment,  69-76 

increase  in  numbers,  221- 
222 

natural  method  of  purifica¬ 
tion,  67-68 

social  progress,  36-37 
“World  State,” 

effect  on,  225-229 
Eating  men 

(see  Measuring  men) 
Eeligion, 

and  the  new  philosophy, 
252-253 
defined,  21 
early  idea  of,  89-90 
man’s  lack  of  understanding, 
79-82 

modernized  standards  essen¬ 
tial,  22 

progress  limited,  240 


299 


INDEX 


Religion,  continued 
science, 

harmony  between,  117- 
120 

new  meaning  given  by, 
79-96 

Reproduction 

(see  also  Birth  rate) 
among  superiors  and  in¬ 
feriors,  56 

among  the  unfit,  61-63 
animals  and  plants, 

best  specimens  selected, 
173 

families  of  Puritans,  171 
human  race, 

selection  disregarded, 
18,  173-174 
preferential, 

duty  of,  171-185 
purity  of  racial  blood 
needed,  286,  287 
Research, 

scientific, 

duty  of,  112-120 
Return  of  the  Middle  Class, 
Corbin,  John,  37 
Righteousness, 

decline  of  its  transmission, 
202 

failure  through  lack  of  un¬ 
derstanding,  18-19 
modern  disregard  of,  196 
science, 

aid  to  understanding, 
22,  115-116 
Rittenhouse,  E.  E., 

quoted  on  disease  increase, 
27 

Robinson,  James  Harvey, 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  school  systems,  193 
Ross,  Edward  A.  (Professor), 
on  American  women, 
development  of,  211 
on  race  mixture,  227 
quoted,  158 

Royal  Families  of  Europe, 

heredity  influence  shown, 
49-50 


Russell,  Bertrand, 

philosophy  of,  255 


S 

Sanity, 

eugenics  ideal,  137 
measurable  quality,  140 
vocational  selection, 

means  of  obtaining,  145 
Santayana,  George, 

philosophy  of,  255,  259,  260 
Savages, 

fools  among,  102 
School-teachers, 
married, 

forbidden  to  teach,  172 

Schools, 

modern  education,  193-194 
Science 

(see  also  Biology) 
aid  to  civilization,  181-182 
applicable  to  government, 
125-128,  276-278 
application  to  humanity,  94- 
96 
art, 

relation  of,  214-215 
Bible  and,  111 
constructive  use  of,  273 
discovery  of,  113-114 
Golden  Rule  of,  110-111 
new, 

mode  of  life  altered  by, 
16-17 

New  Decalogue,  94 
new  valuations  of  life 
through,  233,  268-270 
popularization  of,  121-134 
progress  in,  240 
race  statistics  furnished  by, 
178 

religion  in  relation  to,  79— 
96,  117-120 
research, 

duty  of,  112-120 
socialization  of,  121-134 
standards  of  life  deter¬ 
mined  by,  19-22 


300 


INDEX 


Science,  continued 
statesmanship, 

mutual  service  between, 
16 

unfit  aided  by,  63-64 
Selection, 

artificial, 

intelligent  understand¬ 
ing  of,  135,  136 
essential  to  race  betterment, 
61 

force  of  evolution,  135 
industrial,  143-14.4 
marriage  of  similar  types, 
effect  on  race,  211-212 
mate, 

art  as  factor  in,  213 
natural 

organic  progress  by 
means  of,  34 

race  improvement  by,  74,  75 
Sex-hygiene, 

no  effect  on  next  generation, 
100 

Shaw,  G.  Bernard, 
eugenics, 

attitude  toward,  105- 
106 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.  (Professor), 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
on  fools  among  savages, 
102 

Slosson,  Edwin  N., 

on  education,  194 
Smith,  T.  V.  (Doctor), 
quoted  on, 

popularization  of 
science,  129-131 
William  Jennings 
Bryan,  129-131 
Snobbishness, 

significance,  164 
Snow,  E.  C., 

studies  in  infant  death  rate, 
67 

‘ ‘  Social  Unit,”  285 
Socialism, 

psychology  of,  161-162 
Socialization  of  science, 
duty  of,  121-134 


Societies, 

psychology  of,  161-162 
Sociology, 

social  breakdown, 

causes,  275-278,  283 
social  customs, 

detriment  to  race  prog¬ 
ress,  103 

social  inequality,  42-53 
social  measurement,  144-152 
social  organization, 

faulty  premise  of  pres¬ 
ent  structure,  79-80 
nationality  vs.  ‘‘World 
State,”  225-229 
New  Decalogue  o  f 
Science,  teachings 
changed  by,  279 
new  philosophy,  effect 
of,  261-264 

present  tendency,  223- 
224 

reconstruction  of  prin¬ 
ciples,  80-81,  233 
understanding  through 
science,  273 
social  problems, 

intelligent  solving  of, 
190-191,  192 

Spain, 

influence  lost,  36 
Statesmanship, 
defined,  15 

human  destiny  controlled 
by,  15 

lack  of  training  for,  121- 
124 

science, 

mutual  service  between, 
16 

Statistics, 

American  population  of  the 
future,  175-176 
health,  26-27 

population  increase,  221- 
223 

Strikes, 

one  condition  causing,  160 
Sumner,  William  Graham, 
ideal  type,  136 


301 


INDEX 


Sunday,  Billy, 
eugenics, 

attitude  toward,  105 

Sword, 

beginning  of  metallurgy,  114 
T 

Tasmanians,  66 
Ten  Commandments, 

modern  revelation  through 
science,  17-18 

revision  through  science,  81- 
82 

Thomas,  Augustus, 

Witching  Hour, 

comment  on,  108 
Thomson,  J.  A., 

philosophy  of,  257 
Thorndike,  Edward  L.  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

acknowledgment  to,  9 
mental  tests  made,  45 
on  twins, 

heredity  influence,  50 
quoted  on, 

forces  that  motivate 
men,  166 
quoted  on, 

human  intelligence,  28- 
29 

Trusting  intelligence, 
duty  of,  186-204 
Truth, 

definition  and  scope,  248-253 
teaching  children,  280-281 
Tuberculosis, 

public  health  work, 
effects,  65-66 

Twins, 

heredity  influence,  50 
U 

Unions, 

psychology  of,  161-162 
United  States, 

food  supply  of  future,  221- 
223 

future  population,  175-176 


United  States,  continued 
immigration, 

effect  on  development, 
228,  229 


y 

Variation, 

force  of  evolution,  135 
Vivisection, 

in  California,  131 
Vocational  measurement,  141-144 
Voting, 

qualities  essential  in  voters, 
148,  149 


W 

Walpole,  Horace, 
quoted,  251 
War, 

biological  causes,  219 
food  shortage, 

cause  of,  219-221 
mankind, 

tendency  toward,  217— 

218 

nationality  in  relation  to, 
224-225 

“World  State, ’ ’ 
effect  on,  229 
War  of  1918, 

psychological  effect  on  men, 
163 

Ward,  Lester  F., 
quoted  on, 

social  equality,  44 
Watson,  John  Broadus  (Profes¬ 
sor), 

philosophy  taught  by,  257 
Wells,  H.  G., 

belief  in  “World  State,’ ’ 

225 

eugenics, 

attitude  toward,  105-106 
Weismann,  August, 
eugenics, 

discoveries  in,  99 
heredity  theory,  73 


302 


INDEX 


Williams,  Whiting, 

on  industrial  psychology, 
167,  168 
Women, 

effect  of  environment,  210- 
211 

expectant  mothers,  85-87 
Woods,  Frederick  Adams, 
acknowledgment  to,  9 
decline  of  genius  from  work¬ 
ing  classes,  38 
heredity, 

correlation  of  mental 
and  moral  qualities  in, 
29 

on  Spain's  lost  influence,  36 


Woods,  continued 

Royal  Families  studied,  49- 
50 

significance  of  art,  207,  208, 
209,  210 

“World  State,"  225-229 
Writers, 

scientific  knowledge  essen¬ 
tial,  214-215 

Y 

Yerkes,  Robert  M.  (Colonel), 
on  intelligence  tests,  31-32 
on  mankind, 

measureable  qualities, 
146 


' 


DATE  DUE 


. vifiV--  V  ■  ** 

mm 

w*Fm~ 

.  ,  ,  ,. 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U-S.A  . 

